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HEROIC STATURE 



IHerofc Stature 



jfive H&t>rcs0e5 
IRatban ^bepparb 

Author of "Before an Audience/' etc., etc. 



'^^ 



lpbila^e^pbta 

ametican 3Baptl6t ©ublicatton Societi^ 




WO COPIES RECEIVED 






Copyright 1897 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 



/^-3?673 



iftom tbc Society's own Iprcss 






PUBLISHERS' NOTE 



The matter of this book was found 
among Professor Sheppard's effects by his 
executors. On being examined by them 
and by the publishers' readers, these 
''Addresses'' seemed to merit preserva- 
tion by reason of their many qualities of 
excellence, presenting so much of inspir- 
ing thought and so fitting an exposition of 
the style of a man once prominent before 
the public. 

All the immediate members of Professor 
Sheppard's family have gone with him 
into the world beyond. Most of those 
into whose hands this book will fall, have 
never met or seen him. There are a few 
who will recall the bright, pungent letters 
written by him for the *' Examiner ," over 
the pseudonym of ''Keynote." Others, 
especially in England and Scotland, will 



©ubliabers' Jlote 



recall the various lectures which he deliv- 
ered. To all of these, the publishers are 
sure, these addresses will come as a grate- 
ful remembrance of the one who was 
once with them. It will be a pleasant 
thought to some who hold Professor Shep- 
pard's memory dear, that by this post- 
humous book his work shall still go for- 
ward. 

The publishers have sought for a fitting 
dress for the book that thereby its recep- 
tion may be more favorable and its circu- 
lation more wide. The book is believed 
by them to be in every way worthy of 
the attention of the Christian public. 



VI 



CONTENTS 

The Human Martin Luther ... i 

John Wesley 59 

Norman Macleod 109 

Charles G. Finney 149 

Hugh Latimer 191 



THE HUMAN MARTIN LUTHER 



I 



WE are to consider the great Protestant 
leader from a human point of view. 
For three generations he was of 
German peasant stock ; farther than that 
the biographers do not go. 

Father, grandfather, and great-grand- 
father peasants ! Where did Luther get his 
brains ? Reversion doubt- 
less— probably descended ^"'^'^^^^"^ 
from a Viking king. Son of 
a peasant farmer, he says, it was not writ- 
ten in the stars that he was to become 
a doctor of divinity, or that he should 
pull the pope's hair and marry a runaway 
nun. But it was written in the stars that 
he was to do more for the emancipation 
of the human mind from ecclesiastical 
bondage than any other man. 

He sits high in all the people's hearts 
now, for Catholics and Jews joined in the 
fourth centennial celebration at Eisleben, 
3 



Zbc Wuman tilarttn 5Lutbet 

where Martin Luther was born on the 
tenth of November, 1483, at eleven at 
night precisely. 

At seven years of age he was sent to a 
free school ; there was a free school in 
Germany four hundred years ago. He 
had five brothers, of whom we have never 
heard. It exhausted them to make him. 
Five-sixths of us go to the making of the 
one-sixth — who get all the offices. It 
must be uncomfortable to have one's only 
fame consist in a famous brother. The 
more distinguished he, the more extin- 
guished you. 

Two footsore and weary students ar- 
rived in Magdeburg with staff in hand, 
and on their backs knapsacks containing all 
their worldly goods. They had come to 
study at a famous school of the town. 
One of these boys was Martin Luther. 
He was fourteen years of age. They 
sang under the windows of the rich, and 
begged for bread and alms. It was called 
the ''bread chorus.'' The windows of 
the rich have heard it many a time since, 
and may hear it many a time again before 
4 



Bnceett^ anD Start 



my esteemed contemporary, Mr. Arnold, 
and his remnant, put a stop to the worship 
of lubricity and duplicity, and set the 
world to rights. 

He went from the school at Magdeburg 
to the school at Eisenach, where a wise- 
hearted woman, Ursula Cotta by name, 
gave the boy Martin a home and met his 
four years' expenses. Nor did she offer 
to subscribe the trousers if some other 
woman would furnish all the arithmetics, 
according to the stratagem of him who 
subscribes on condition that the rest of us 
shall help him get the name and credit of it. 

At eighteen years of age he was a stu- 
dent at the University of Erfurt, where 
his father was then able to support him 
until he secured his degree. 

He dipped into theology, then into the 
law. He did not like the drudgery of the 
law, or the subtleties of theology. He 
was fond of rhetoric and oratory, poetry 
and music. He was rhetorical and ora- 
torical from the beginning to the end of 
his career. He learned to play upon the 
guitar and flute, a good example to all 
5 



XLbc Human fiRarttn Xutber 

young parsons and other young men — 
pick up some source of amusement to 
which you can flee to escape the blues. 
It will help you ; it may help others. 

The human Martin Luther had a very 
human temper. The violence of his dis- 
position was derived from 

^ucmper ^^^h parents— not to men- 
tion his school teachers, one 
of whom we are told licked him fifteen 
times in one day for not knowing what he 
was never taught. If he had been a young 
American Protestant he would probably 
have thrashed the teacher. He says he 
often hid in the chimney corner until the 
storm of his dear father's wrath blew 
over. His mother too was inordinately 
addicted to the rod. Both of his par- 
ents were passionate and affectionate, 
and so was he. The most savage dis- 
positions have intervals of extreme ten- 
derness. 

Luther's father's coat of arms was a 

hammer on a granite block, and that well 

typified what Luther afterward became — 

a hammer on a granite block. 
6 



We Sense of tbe /iRarveloue 

Looking at him from a human point of 
view, we will make note of prominent 
characteristics. His sense 
of the marvelous was one. "^^'^J^ll^'V^^ 
He was what we call super- 
stitious from first to last — an indefinite 
word, but definite enough as applied to 
him. Necessarily superstitious from his 
being born and bred a Roman Catholic 
in 1483 instead of in 1883, when it is so 
easy for Monseigneur Capel to boast of 
how much range the reason is allowed by 
the pope. The range allowed to reason 
by the pope is the range of reason allowed 
by — reason. 

A flash of lightning set Luther's sense 
of the marvelous on fire. He could not 
resist such a summons. He fell to the 
ground ; it was the call of God to him, a 
call to the convent. He implored Saint 
Ann to help him to become a monk, and a 
monk he became. This is a striking illus- 
tration of the fact that a man's wish may 
be considered God's call, and that a strong 
predisposition may be confounded with an 
answer to a prayer. 
7 



ZTbe IHuman fiQattin Xutber 

He remained three years in the con- 
vent at Erfurt. He developed rapidly and 
enormously in a religious 

u™S experience of the monastic 
type, morbid, malarial, a 
low malarial fever being mistaken for high 
spiritual fervor, in which vanity passed 
for humility, and self-indulgence for self- 
denial. For a man makes himself believe 
that in going through the observances he 
is crucifying himself, whereas he is really 
glorifying himself. 

As the result of this type of piety Luther 
became the victim of a morbid self-ex- 
amination. He accused him- 
STrnmimtr self as though he were guilty 
of crime, when he was guilty 
of only one crime, the crime of a false 
self-accusation. It is not impossible to 
hear now from the pulpit a prayer which 
would insure an indictment by the grand 
jury if the man were telling the truth. 
Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
thyself. 

No half-hearted monk was the boy 

Luther. He was a whole-hearted monk, 
8 



Jtiie afirst trurnin^srpotnt 



a monk of the monks was he. Monks 
pray; he prayed without ceasing. Monks 
fast ; he fasted till you could see the ribs 
through his skin. Monks do penance; he 
did penance, flogging himself and starving 
himself, and confining himself in a dark 
cell, until he was found prostrate, ema- 
ciated, almost dead with his attempts to 
please God by disobeying his command- 
ments. The severity of his early dis- 
cipline had contributed to the unhealthful 
gloom that drove him into the convent. 

In this convent, we are told, Luther 
read the whole of the Bible for the first 
time. Some assert that he 
was ignorant up to this time ^^^„\;f^^^^^^^^ 
of Paul's Epistles. Are we 
to conclude that the Epistles did for Luther 
what the Gospels alone were not able 
to do ? that Paul succeeded where Jesus 
failed ? At all events he seems to have 
been indebted to Paul for a revolution in 
his religion. Paul and he were congenial. 
He was enamored of Paul's method of 
controversial statement, reveled in the 
very things hard to be understood, and 
9 



Zbc Human /Bbarttn Xutber 

made them no easier to be understood by 
explaining them. 

He felt the necessity of a vocabulary 
that admits of pulmonary eloquence, like 
those who prefer the old version to the 
new, because it is easier for them to pro- 
duce an effect with the word damnation, 
than with the thing condemnation. They 
would rather damn a man than condemn 
him, because they are under the impres- 
sion that the man would prefer to be con- 
demned. PauFs influence upon Luther 
would make a psychological-theological 
study of rare interest. 

The precise meaning of his ''justifica- 
tion by faith'' has occasioned much dis- 
cussion, into which we shall not enter. 
There is no doubt that the ferment of 
Luther's mind precluded exact thinking, 
and that it was something of a tangle to 
himself. When Dr. Jonas complained to 
him that he could not follow him in his 
sermons, Luther replied, 'M cannot follow 
myself; I am too wordy." 

But our topic is not so much Luther's 
doctrines as how he handled them and 

lO 



1Hl9 Jfitat xrumtn^sspoint 



himself. Ours is not a doctrinal but a 
personal ; not a spiritual but a human 
point of view. 

This change or revolution was emo- 
tional, rather than intellectual. With 
that understanding it is not necessary for 
him, or his biographers, or us to get a 
definite idea of what this change amounted 
to, so far as his theological opinions are 
concerned. He had a tumultuous ex- 
perience in the convent. He was some- 
times prostrate under a sense of unpardon- 
able sin, and sometimes rose into a de- 
lirium of ecstasy from a sense of forgive- 
ness. He rose out of his stupor with a 
devouring passion for making himself a 
better man, and his church a better church, 
and his world a better world. A temper- 
ament this, not for keeping the command- 
ments, but for public speaking. It soon 
showed itself, and was soon recognized. 
From this time he was a great public 
speaker and agitator, for he had the ora- 
torical temperament. He was nervous. 
No man can be too nervous for a public 
speaker, provided he keeps on the sane 
II 



XTbe Muman fnlartin Xutbet 

side of the line — if anybody can tell 
where that is. 

Luther was quick-witted, passionate, 
combative, aggressive, droll, with an 
abundance of animal magnetism, and a 
large vocabulary by nature, and a quick, 
accurate, natural ear for the rhythm of 
rhetoric ; in short, he was endowed and 
equipped for an outdoor leader — a leader 
of the people. He had neither the kind 
of courage, nor the balance, nor the judg- 
ment, nor the tact, required in a leader of 
thought or a teacher of ideas. 

He had the courage that draws its 
nourishment from collision, its stimulation 
from opposition. His fire was like that of 
the flints, it needed friction to draw it out. 
Before the mob and before the pope, and 
before governors and kings, he was auda- 
cious and aggressive ; in the quiet of his 
study he was hesitating and vacillating. 
This is temperament. The opinions he 
proclaimed in public with so much bold- 
ness, were spoken of with misgivings 
when he reflected upon them in private. 
He exclaimed : 

12 



IPriest anD ©rofe^eor 



*'I never feel prouder, more full of lofty 
daring, than when I hear their denuncia- 
tions. What care I for the whole mob of 
them, doctors, bishops, and princes/' 

But when the denunciation dies away 
then dies away the delirium it occasioned. 
Many a time the preacher imagines he has 
torn everybody to pieces, but finds that 
he has torn nobody to pieces but himself. 

He was ordained as a priest at twenty- 
four, and became a professor of philosophy 
at the University of Witten- 
berg at twenty-five. Now ^^^^'J^l 
watch him feel his way. 
Did you ever feel your way in the dark ? 

His lectures drew crowds of students 
and created a sensation. They were 
searching, sweeping, bold. The young 
priest was evidently feeling his way into 
a line of thought of his own. The thunder 
in him began to come out. Lecturing 
brought it out. Lecturing is the oldest of 
the forms of public instruction, and will 
hold its own with any and all of them to 
the end. 

The audience was made up of professors, 
13 



Zbc Muman flISartin Xutber 

students, nobles, princes, common people, 
and they were all amazed at his boldness, 
fascinated by his originality, startled by 
his heresies. Another heretic is rising. 
He will certainly make a stir, but what 
kind of a stir ? He will certainly be a 
leader, but whither will he lead ? What 
was the young man driving at ? 

His next great experience was a long 
journey. Traveling revolutionizes opin- 
ions, often uproots convic- 

long-entrenched ideas, early 
education, parental influence; changes 
character for good or evil. 

As he approached the capital of Chris- 
tendom, he thought of it with awe and 
looked upon it with reverence ; he would 
nourish his faith with its memories and 
observances. He fell upon his knees, 
and exclaimed, '' Hail, Holy Rome ! '' but 
he no sooner beheld it than he beheld its 
corruption. He had expected to find the 
highest faith, he really found the lowest 
form of unbelief, and disbelief, and mis- 
belief. From the pope down the hierarchy 
14 



1Hi0 IRetum from 1?ome 



was bad, bad, bad. The priests laughed 
at their own doctrines and rites. They 
carried around the consecrated wafer on 
a beautiful white stallion. He says, ''A 
good Italian is as great a prodigy as a 
black swan.'' 

He was next a doctor of divinity, lec- 
turer at the university, and town preacher. 
It was a transition period. 
He felt his responsibility and j^,^^*^'^'" 
shrank from it ; he told his 
friends that they had put too much upon 
him. He shrank, but went forward; 
dreaded to speak, but spoke out. It was 
not for want of self-confidence that he 
shrank. He had self-confidence and self- 
depreciation both, a common combination 
in public speakers and leaders of men. 

The most effective popular leaders are 
made up of these two contradictory ele- 
ments warring in their members, an ex- 
terior self-assertion, and an interior awful 
sense of deficiency — a defiant front and 
the perspiration running down the back. 
He threw himself into his work with just 
that peculiar quality of zeal and pluck 
15 



^be IHuman fiOarttn Xutbct 

which comes of just such shrinking self- 
depreciation as his. Apprehension of 
failure is an element of success. 

Leo X., pope of Rome, wanted money 
with which to finish St. Peter's, and in- 
stead of getting a mortgage, 
ZZmBm he sent the rascally monk. 
Tetzel, to Germany with 
indulgences for sale. 

The last thought of the first Christians 
was a gorgeous house of worship, and the 
first thought of the last Christians is a 
gorgeous mortgaged house of worship, 
which echoes with — yes, that's the trouble 
— it is so constituted that you can hear 
nothing of the gospel but its echoes. 
Hence you never hear a church in the 
New Testament say one word about rais- 
ing money to pay a debt, and you never 
hear anything in some churches of our 
day but an appeal for money, or else an 
appeal for some one to come and persuade 
them to give what they say they have 
not in their possession to give, cash. 

Tetzel mounted his auction block and 

exclaimed : 

i6 



Zbc ViincVQ:^flvc lPropO0ttion0 

*Ms your friend or relative roasting in 
purgatory ? The moment your money 
chinks in the pope's chest, that moment 
your friend's soul flies to heaven." *' Saint 
Stephen gave himself up to be stoned and 
Saint Bartholomew to be skinned, now 
will you not at least make the sacrifice of 
a small donation to save your souls ? " 

This donation bought a letter of indul- 
gence, which allowed the bearer to water 
the stock of the company, or freeze out 
the other stockholders, or confiscate any 
man's property that stood in his way, 
provided he was in his pew every Sunday 
morning, with a long face and a loud voice. 
A pew may be as much of a self-indul- 
gence as an opera box. Are we quite sure 
that an auction sale of pews is not a sale 
of indulgences ? 

Luther's students went to hear Tetzel 
and told Luther what Tetzel said. Stu- 
dents love a row. They 
found Luther in just the ''ll':ZT 
state of inflammability ade- 
quate for their purpose. Behold how 
great a forest a little fire kindleth. 

B 17 



Zbc Muman fnlatttn Xutber 

He was now twenty-eight years of age. 
He was young, but he had learned how 
to handle himself before an audience. All 
his qualities and qualifications came into 
play — even his very defects were aids. 
His violent temper roused the German 
phlegm. He was in his element — con- 
troversy, hand to hand, out-door, pugna- 
cious polemics. He was young, roused, 
and mad. The angry spot doth glow on 
Caesar's brow. 

No other kind of man was equipped for 
such a work as this — no mere scholar, or 
theologian, or fastidious critic, or purist in 
rhetoric ; no Melancthon, or Erasmus, or 
Calvin. The human Martin Luther was 
needed for the human Martin Luther's 
work. 

He attacked Tetzel with all the vehe- 
mence, and with all the indefiniteness and 
ambiguity, of his nature. A young lion 
roared against him and he rent him as he 
would a kid, with a very indefinite idea 
of what the lion was talking about. He 
challenged Tetzel and all the rest of them 

to a discussion, according to custom, by 
i8 



XLbc Viinct^^fivc Propo6ttion0 

writing out and nailing up ninety-five 
propositions, or theses, upon the pillars 
of the church of All Saints. That was 
October 31, 1517. This country had been 
discovered only twenty-five years. 

It is sufficient for our purpose here to 
quote but some portions of these proposi- 
tions : 

No. I. ''When Christ commands us to 
repent he intends that our whole life shall 
be one of repentance.'' 

No. 7. ** God forgives the sins of no one 
who is not willing to obey his confessor." 

No. 32. '* Those who think themselves 
sure of salvation by indulgences will go to 
perdition with those who taught them so.'' 

No. 71. *' Cursed be he who speaks 
against the indulgence of the pope." 

No. 72. *' But blessed be he who speaks 
against the foolish and impudent language 
of the preachers of indulgences." 

No. 86. '* * Why,' ask the common peo- 
ple, * does not the pope, who is richer than 
Croesus, build St. Peter's with his own 
money instead of that of poor Chris- 
tians ? ' " 

19 



Zhc IHuman flUarttn Hutber 

(Perhaps because rich men often make 
poor Christians. They do not give lest 
they should prevent those from giving 
who have nothing to give. So nobody 
gets anything until somebody dies, and 
then the lawyers get it.) 

These propositions may sound tame to 
us, but they were bold for him and his 
circumstances ; nor do they dovetail any 
better than some of the planks of our 
wonderful party platforms ; but that itself 
is illustrative of Luther's intellect, posi- 
tion, and circumstances. 

He was still feeling his way ; he was 
always feeling his way. Who is not ? 
He says himself, these ninety-five proposi- 
tions *'were advanced more by way of 
argument than in a positive manner.'' 
Speaking of what was called his ** furious 
attack '' in these theses, he says : *' I did 
not know what indulgence was, and the 
tune was pitched too high for my voice.'' 

But the voice rose to the tune, and the 

people rose to the voice. It was another 

voice crying in the wilderness, but it 

lacked the defmiteness and explicitness of 
20 



zrbe Iftinet^tftlve ipropositiona 

John the Baptist's cry. Few reformers 
know so well what they are working for 
as John the Baptist did. 

He could not look into the fields of time 
and say which grain would grow and 
which would not, but he could sow seeds 
with a free hand, and some of them have 
grown, or a Quaker boy would not be 
writing this. 

We do not disparage him ; we merely 
explain him. His method of action is be- 
yond the reach of microscopic criticism, 
and we must give the leviathan room to 
disport himself. Mr. Matthew Arnold calls 
him a ** Philistine of genius, who had a 
coarseness and lack of spiritual delicacy 
which has harmed his disciples.'' 

He certainly was no esthete. If he had 
come to this country he would have come 
in the ** Mayflower," and not in the '' Sun- 
flower." I came over in the *' William 
Penn " and am another Philistine, and a 
Quaker Philistine at that ; hence the anti- 
ecclesiastical bias of this discourse. 

Yes, coarse he was perhaps, coarse like 
the plow that has roots to tear up, coarse 

21 



XLbc Muman fHlartln Xutbet 

like the bulldog that has a bull to throw. 
And the bulldog threw the bull. Head- 
long, headstrong, but heartright and up- 
right was this man Luther. 

Luther was now at bay. A brave man 
at bay is a scene to admire, and men glory 
in him. Martin Luther at 
bay IS a historical scene. It 
was an event, and was destined to change 
events. It brought his great cause to a 
great crisis. Feeling his way until he 
found himself at bay, he was forced to go 
farther than he would have gone, and 
compelled to take a position that he never 
would have taken. The attempt and not 
the deed confounded him. 

He did not intend to secede from the 
Romish Church ; he intended to stay in it 
and reconstruct it, but it was not so to be. 
Events are often too much for the men 
who create them. The Reformation was 
now leading the Reformer, instead of the 
Reformer the Reformation. 

The pope might have won him by con- 
ciliatory tact, but he preferred the course 
which Protestantism would have chosen, 

22 



Hlo IRetreat 



the coercion which would bring on a col- 
lision, which in turn would ensure victory 
to Luther. The pope excommunicated 
Luther, and thus Leo X. created the first 
great Protestant Reformer. 

Then there was a stir and a commotion. 
The pope's Bull of excommunication ar- 
rived in Germany, and the students took 
it from the bookseller's shop and tore it 
to pieces. Luther burned it at the gates 
of the town amid acclamations and ex- 
ultations. Tetzel had burned Luther's 
ninety-five propositions, Luther burned 
the pope's anathema. 

Luther once at issue with the whole 
power of Rome there was no retreat. He 
must go forward. Confused 
motives withm him and con- 
fused noises around him, there he stood, 
bewildered but unabashed. He had 
groped his way to a point from which he 
dared not, could not, recede. He had set 
out to make a better man of himself, a 
better church of his church, and a better 
world of his world. But his church re- 
pudiated him, and the world was divided 
23 



XLbc IHuman fiOartin Xutber 

on account of him. He went out to war 
before he heard the ** moving in the tops 
of the mulberry trees/' but now he must 
fight on. 

Just here we, from our point of view in 
time and circumstances, can see distinctly 
a profound principle disentangle itself from 
the confused noises : 

No religious authority can be accepted 
without religion ; destitute of religion the 
man is destitute of authority, whatever 
may be his costume or credentials. 

There is not a more dramatic scene in 
all history, or a more picturesque figure, 
than Luther arraigned before 
^Tmo^r the diet at Worms. 

He left Wittenberg in a 
carriage surrounded by his friends from 
the university and the town, who filled 
the air with shouts and prayers and bene- 
dictions. *' Do not desert us,'' they cried. 
The villages welcomed him as he passed. 
They drank his health at the hotels, and 
cheered him with merry music. A priest 
sent him a portrait of Savonarola, and 

urged him to be manful for the truth. At 
24 



JSetore tbe 2)iet at llClorme 



Weimar they were posting an edict re- 
quiring all who had Luther's books to give 
them up. He was asked if this sign de- 
terred him, and he replied, '' I will go on 
if they kindle a fire between Wittenberg 
and Worms that reaches heaven/' 

His health succumbed to the excitement, 
and his spirits failed with his failing 
strength. The spirits of the bravest de- 
pend upon the brave man's health ; words 
will not do. 

In spite of bad health and low spirits he 
held a public discussion at Heidelberg, and 
pushed on. As he approached the im- 
perial city and its dread ordeal, his friends 
weakened and sought to deter him. But 
he answered : 

*' I am resolved to enter Worms, although 
as many devils should set at me as there 
are tiles on the housetops.'' 

And he did enter Worms, and enter the 
diet, and stand in the presence of all the 
pomp and power of Germany and of Rome, 
civil and ecclesiastical. The emperor of 
Germany, Charles V., sat upon a throne 
high and lifted up, clad in the royal purple. 
25 



U\)c IHuman fniartin Xutbet 

Below him in the chair of State sat his 
brother Frederick. Before him was the 
pope's nuncio, clothed in full canonicals, 
and holding in his hand the thunders of 
the Vatican, which at that day made 
monarchs tremble and held nations in sub- 
jection. Grouped around were the princes 
and great officers of Church and State ; 
knights and nobles in their yellow cloaks, 
the representatives of the free cities in 
black, the bishops in violet, the cardinals 
in blazing scarlet, the chivalry of Germany 
in their coats of mail and with glittering 
swords. 

Everything and everybody, in short, 
was so disposed and arranged as to dazzle 
the imagination, confound the understand- 
ing, and overwhelm the judgment. Luther 
was ushered into the presence of this 
transcendent array of learning, power, 
authority, and impudence — ecclesiastical 
impudence, which transcends every other 
kind of impudence of which we have 
any knowledge or conception. 

He was only thirty-eight years of age, 
and was not the Luther of later days, 
26 



3i3etore tbe 2)let at iKHorms 



obese and hearty. He weighed only 
about one hundred and fifty pounds. He 
was emaciated and pallid ; he had come 
from hard study, and was still ill ; his 
body was consumed with disease, his 
mind with apprehension. He felt awfully 
alone. As he approached the imperial 
presence an old warrior greeted him with 
the remark: ** My good monk, you are 
going a path such as I and our captains, 
in our hardest fight, have never trodden." 

He showed signs of bewilderment. His 
voice was feeble, contrasting with the 
voice of the awful power that called him 
to account. This is what makes him 
human to us and fascinating, incompar- 
ably fascinating. Glorious human Martin 
Luther ! 

He was asked if he acknowledged the 
books before him as his. He answered in 
a low tone and a tone of alarm, '* Yes.'' 
Will he recant them ? He hesitated, and 
there was a dead silence. He asked for a 
day in which to frame an answer, and it 
was granted. 

The council adjourned. Every man of 
27 



Zbc IHuman fiOartln Xutber 

it probably believed that the monk was 
going to retract. What else could he 
mean by delay ? 

It was a crisis in the history of the great 
Reformation. The second day came. The 
august diet reassembled, and again Luther 
was asked if he will retract. He replied 
at length, in a dignified and astute argu- 
ment, for he had prepared himself well. 
He asked for a discriminating judgment of 
his books. They differed widely ; surely 
they could not all be equally obnoxious. 

But the council was not there for con- 
sultation with him, but for judgment upon 
him. They demanded a direct answer to 
their question, will he recant ? 

Then came the memorable, imperish- 
able words : 

''Since your imperial majesty demands 
a direct answer, I will give you one that 
has neither horns nor teeth. Except I be 
convinced by Scripture and reason, I 
neither can, nor dare, retract anything. 
My conscience is a captive to God's word, 
and it is neither safe nor right to go against 
conscience.'' 

28 



Xutber'0 JFigbt wttb ILutber 

At this point, according to some reports, 
there was a tremendous confusion, in 
which Luther was taunted by ecclesiastics, 
and finally ended by the exclamation, 
'* Here I take my stand ; I can do no other- 
wise. So help me God. Amen.'' 

The council broke up, and that was the 
breaking up of the Roman Catholic power 
in Germany. The beginning of the end 
had come. The Reformation was to go 
forward ; German}^ was lost to the pope 
forever, Scotland soon was to be, and 
England. The United States, a new na- 
tion that was yet to be, was never to 
come under the Roman, nor any other 
ecclesiastical domination. 

The human Martin Luther's fight with 
the pope involved a fight with the human 
Martin Luther. He had his 
conscience to fight as well '':;^^^ZftT 
as the vicegerent of the 
Almighty at St. Peter's. What a vice- 
gerent. What a pope that conscience 
was. A wrong conscience upbraids with 
as much severity as a right one. It was 

no easier to make a better man of him- 
29 



XLbc Human filartin Xutber 

self than to make a better church of his 
church. 

It is much easier to advocate civil service 
reform than to practise it on yourself, if 
you are a candidate for the presidency. 
He says: '' I feel how difficult it is to lay 
aside the scruples which I have had so 
long.'' ''Oh, how much pain it has cost 
me to justify myself in standing alone 
against the pope. How many times have 
I asked myself what my enemies have 
asked me. Art thou alone wise ? Can 
everybody else be mistaken ? " 

He says his suffering, his utter despair, 
cannot be conceived by others. He would 
sometimes wish to pass a sponge over 
what he had written. 

One dramatic scene quickly followed 
another in the stirring drama of the Re- 
former's life. He disap- 
^"maftS ^^ peared from the publicity of 
the diet at Worms, and re- 
appeared in the obscurity of the castle of 
Wartburg. On his way home from Worms 
he was spirited away to this remote and se- 
cluded castle by his friends to save his life. 
30 



In tbe Castle ot TWlartbura 



Here he spent about a year in the disguise 
of a knight, hunting, writing, studying, 
translating the Bible, or meditating ways 
and means for circumventing the pope and 
promoting the Reformation. 

He was hard at work on his translation 
of the Psalms in the lonely castle far 
away in the forest, shut out from the 
world, cut off from his followers. The 
singing of the birds and the sighing of the 
winds were the only sounds that reached 
him. Loneliness is a malady to so 
stormy a spirit as the human Martin 
Luther. 

He was worn out with hard study and 
long fasting, and had had little sleep or 
recreation. He had forced his brain with 
whip and spur. He was afflicted with the 
disorders of body and mind, brought on 
by repeated violations of God's good 
laws. Finally the outraged imagination 
took revenge upon the will and overpow- 
ered it, and there rose before the miser- 
able hermit, a spectre such as those that 
haunt the sleep of the diseased, the 
maniac, or the criminal, Alas, that re- 
31 



Ube Human flQartin Xutbet 

ligion should have to suffer for the indiges- 
tion of its teachers ! 

For Luther there was but one solution 
of the apparition : it was the devil. For 
Luther there was but one way of getting 
rid of him, to fight. He must take the 
aggressive. He seized his inkstand and 
hurled it at the spectre, and to this day 
they will show you where the Reformer's 
inkstand struck the — wall. 

This was a very characteristic act, this 
throwing the inkstand at the devil. It 
opens out his nature to us, intellectual, 
psychological, theological, and illogical. 
It brings us to one of the forces that drove 
the marvelous piece of human machinery 
that we call the human Martin Luther, his 
belief in an evil being having almost as 
much power in the world as the Good 
Being who made it. He believed in the 
devil beyond even the age or his contem- 
poraries. Some have been led by this to 
question his sanity. He certainly was 
unsane if not insane, as indeed any man 
is whose digestive apparatus upsets his 
thinking apparatus. 

32 



IFn tbe Castle of TimartburQ 



I have made up my mind that all these 
monster men were a little cracked, so if 
we are not very much cracked we may 
know that we are not very big men. 
Luther was sincere, at all events, and sin- 
cerity is one of the awful motive forces of 
the world. 

He stopped eating and was found 
stretched insensible on the floor of his 
cell ; that was the devil. He overworked 
his brain and lost his head ; that was the 
devil. He over-excited his huge imagina- 
tion until he had all the fantastic and pre- 
posterous visions of an opium eater, and 
that was the devil. He had the earache ; 
that was the devil. He never had the 
neuralgia, or he would have thought two 
devils were fighting a duel on the inside of 
his head ; or the rheumatism, or he would 
have thought he had a devil sawing at 
every joint. 

He had a knife in his hand, and was 
half minded to cut his head off with it ; 
that is the devil. The devil rattled the 
hazel nuts in the bag at night. If Luther 
had eaten them before going to bed the 
33 c 



tibe Buman fnlarttn Xutber 

devil would have rattled them in the Re- 
former's stomach. He speaks of a man 
who tore off one of Satan's horns. Luther 
believed in this devil's miraculous power. 
He could smite with a malady that should 
slowly destroy life, or could suddenly ar- 
rest the course of a disease. He sent the 
storms, and the winds were his puifmg 
and blowing. 

He believed in demoniacal possession, 
that witchcraft was the devil's craft, that 
he could transform women into witches 
and send them riding through the air on 
broomsticks. He sometimes doubted the 
existence of God, but he never doubted 
the existence of the devil. Then again 
he was so beaten about that he did not 
know whether God was the devil or the 
devil was God. He encountered great 
devils who were learned doctors in the- 
ology, some of whom in the flesh are 
sometimes suspected of getting his Satanic 
majesty on the wrong throne. 

He resorted to various devices for put- 
ting Satan to flight, a glass of wine, a 
strain on the violin, or a long prayer, and 
34 



One of tbe XorD'a BnointeD 

always obliged the ** old boy '' to let go at 
last. All this seems pretty good evidence, 
including his glass of wine, that his devil 
was of his own creation and that when he 
put on his hat he put it on the — apparition 
at which he threw his inkstand. This 
was part of Luther's fight, this fight with 
the devil. He was contending with, not 
simply the pope, with his wide-spread, 
well-drilled army of cardinals, bishops, 
priests, and monks, but with these as the 
instruments of a malign deity who is dis- 
puting with a benign deity for supremacy 
in the world. Such was Luther's fight, a 
fight with the church, the flesh, and the 
devil. 

Another motive force in the great Re- 
former was this : Martin Luther believed 
that Martin Luther was one 
of the Lord's anointed with ^^'^VoYnur'' 
all the prerogatives of one — 
just as the pope did and does. The kings 
of the earth set themselves, and the rulers 
take counsel together against the Lord 
and against his anointed. 

He says, if he is restored to health he 
35 



XLbc IHuman martin Xutber 

will by God's help write against Erasmus 
and kill him. '* He has insulted my Christ 
and must be punished/' Also he says, 
'M killed Munzer, and his death at times 
weighed upon my conscience, but I killed 
him because he sought to kill my Christ." 

The man has not been born who has the 
slightest shadow of authority for using 
such language or acting from such a mo- 
tive. When his saurkraut disagreed with 
him, he charged it to the devil ; when his 
associates disagreed with him, they dis- 
agreed with God. 

And yet what an influence that motive 
has been in the history of the church. It 
has made the ''Lord's anointed" a re- 
proach and horror, from Luther to Presi- 
dent Taylor of the Mormon hierarchy. 
The tap-root of Roman Catholicism is this 
assumption of police power in the name of 
the Deity, under the name and title of 
the Lord's anointed, and Luther carried it 
over into Protestantism, and there some of 
it remains to this day. Any man has it, 
whether he proclaims with Cromwell, *' If 
God shall give you into my hands I will 
36 



XLbc /Iftonft flRarrtea a IRun 



not spare a man of you," or with a Prot- 
estant preacher, that the Mormon religion 
should be put down by an army with rifles, 
and the infidel Turks driven out of the 
missionary's way with bayonets. 

If Munzer, or the Mormons, or the Jews, 
or the atheists, or the agnostics, or the 
''peculiar people," break the law against 
disorder, vice, or crime, they are to be 
arraigned and punished by the civil au- 
thority, but there is no ecclesiastical tri- 
bunal that has authority over them except 
such as they voluntarily consent to obey. 

The Christian has no ecclesiastical juris- 
diction over the infidel, or the theist over 
the atheist, or the Gentile over the Jew, 
or the Protestant over the Catholic, or the 
Catholic over the Protestant, or the Prot- 
estant who keeps the new Sunday over 
the Protestant who keeps the old Sabbath. 

He broke his vow and married a nun. 
Every old bachelor does that, especially 
if by so doing he can find 
another opportunity for play- n„^,lT««„ 
ing the part of the Lord's 
anointed, who are no more to be desired 
37 



Zbc Human fniartin Xutber 

as head of a house than as head of the 
State or the Church. 

He said: 'Mf I were to marry again I 
would carve an obedient wife for myself 
out of a block of marble, for unless I did 
I should despair of finding one.'' 

Still, like all men of impulses, the im- 
pulse of tenderness was among the rest. 
The hardest men have soft spots, if not in 
their hearts, in their heads. He was 
never cross except when he was crossed. 
It was beautiful in him to send a letter of 
sympathy to Tetzel when he was dying 
of a broken heart in the cloister. 

He was fond of fun, and full of it, after 
he had shaken off his monasticism and 
taken on some flesh. He that putteth his 
trust in the Lord shall be made fat. He 
said he would like to give the worms a 
good fat doctor to feed upon. He aban- 
doned emaciation as a means of grace, 
and the sour monk became a jolly father. 
He relished nonsense and merry music 
and frolic, that would have broken the 
heart of good President Finney, who died 
deploring the rise and progress of croquet. 
38 



1Ht6 ©overtis 



Luther's poverty is a farcical act in the 
tragedy of his career. After he was 
married and had a family 
and a home and was more 
than half-way through his great work and 
past the hardest of it, when he had the 
masses of Germany and many of its 
nobles and princes in his following, he 
was harassed by poverty and hectored 
with debt. Think of it 1 Protestantism 
was rich ; Luther was poor. It is rich to- 
day and many of its preachers are starv- 
ing. 

** I am becoming more and more over- 
whelmed with debt. I shall be compelled 
to solicit alms by and by.'' *M have 
been obliged to pawn three goblets and 
sell one." Think of the leader of the 
Reformation reduced to such straits 1 

His strength was hunger-bitten. He 
was a dependent upon the Elector of 
Saxony, whose remittances were becom- 
ing suspiciously small and infrequent. 
Poverty is a fatality. It pursues some 
and nags them clean out of the world. 
It follows others like a ridiculous caprice. 
39 



Zbc IHuman fHlarttn Xutber 

There came still another turning-point. 
This time it was a turning-point for Chris- 
tendom ; Protestantism was 
^"^Toinr"^"^' organized. In 1 529 we come 
upon the word Protestant. 
An imperial diet was assembled at Spires 
to take account of Luther's movement 
and put a stop to it. It decreed that the 
pope's Bull against Luther must be sus- 
tained and Luther silenced. The Luther- 
ans present, made up of princes and dukes 
and a large following of the highest re- 
spectability, protested. The first Prot- 
estants were German princes. 

Then we have the Protestants in coun- 
cil at Augsburg, in 1530, where and when 
their first Confession of Faith was adopted. 
Protestantism was sown in power and 
raised in power. The movement now 
degenerated into a vituperative wrangle. 
Learning and ignorance, prelates high and 
low, poured out upon Luther an incessant 
torrent of malevolent abuse ; but Luther 
was more than a match for them in the 
weapons of their choice. 

He could return worse than he received ; 
40 



Bnotber tTurnin^sspoint 



he had a genius for invective, and was 
copiously endowed with the vocabulary 
of abuse. He delighted in the desolating 
wrath of words. 

He denounced the followers who dis- 
agreed with him with no less acrimony 
than the enemies who opposed him out- 
right. Erasmus broke with him in doc- 
trine, and got the better of him in argu- 
ment, whereupon Luther called him ^*a 
viper, a bug, a serpent, a fox, a knave, 
and an amphibolous being,'' reminding us 
of O'Connell calling the old Irish woman 
*'the hypotenuse of a right-angled tri- 
angle." 

The anger that sustained him in an 
open fight with words failed him in the 
arena of pure argument. Luther is a 
striking illustration of the supporting 
power of an angry temper. Being angry 
he forgot that he ever heard the name of 
death. 

''When I get angry, I forget for the 
time my physical maladies. My under- 
standing seems sharpened. I never speak 
better than when I am in a passion.'* 
41 



Zbc IHuman fillattln Xutber 

One of our preachers says his ^* faults 
are not worth mentioning/' But that is 
just what they are. They are indispen- 
sable to the understanding of him. So 
are any man's ; they make his virtues 
powerful. His morbidity gave vigor to 
his brain and sting to his diction. His 
perceptive faculties were sharpened by a 
disordered nervous organization. 

He says, ** The fault is mainly in those 
who knowing the irritability of the dog, 
persist in teasing him." He had a good 
heart but a bad temper, which is better 
than to have a bad heart and a good 
temper. 

He would consent to no alliance with 
Zwingli or Calvin. The Reformer of Ger- 
many had no dealings with the Reformers 
of England, showing how little the '* Lord's 
anointed" are anointed by his Spirit. 
Luther was as intolerant toward those 
who dared to go farther than he did, as 
the pope was toward those who went as 
far as Luther did. There was more than 
a jest in his jocosely calling himself the 

German pope. Luther revolted against 
42 



Bnotber ZTurnlngsjpoint 



the intolerance of the pope, and was ex- 
communicated for it; Zwingli revolted 
against the intolerance of Luther, and was 
repudiated for it. 

He was horrified at the bloody deeds 
that followed his revolution, but he was 
not averse to putting a stop to a heretic 
by putting an end to his existence. He 
believed in the right of the State to punish 
heresy and advocated the burning of 
witches. 

'M would have no compassion on these 
witches ; I would burn them all.'' 

He uses the same language in speaking 
of the peasants, the vicious Papists, the 
turbulent Swiss, Erasmus, and the witches ; 
they should all be disposed of without 
mercy or toleration ; they deserve the 
wrath of God and man — God and his vice- 
gerent Luther. He speaks as having no 
power to do wrong. 

Now look back to the emotional turbu- 
lence in the convent when he set about 
making Martin Luther a better man, and 
his church a better church, and his world 
a better world. Did he make himself a 
43 



G:be jHuman fiQattfn Xutbet 

better man ? Did he not confound feeling 
right with doing right? feeling religious, 
with being religious ? Was ever a man 
made better by a religious St. Vitus dance? 
Did he make his church a better church 
and his world a better world ? 1 think he 
did — or if he did not his movement did. 

He was no more under the influence of 
Jesus when he used such language, than 
Jesus was under Luther's influence when 
he commanded Peter to put up his sword, 
or us to obey the Golden Rule. Was ever 
a man thrown into an epileptic fit by read- 
ing the Sermon on the Mount ? 

Looking back now over these four 

hundred years, how far did he get ? The 

pope held that there was 

"^Teoet?^^^ no salvation outside of his 
church ; Luther held that 
there was no salvation outside of his. 
He believed in transubstantiation, or the 
real presence, to the last. His theology 
was made up of slashing rationalism and 
rank sacramentarianism. He denounced 
the pope for setting himself above Scrip- 
ture, and then set himself above it. 
44 



Mow jfat MD be ©eti 



He discredited the Epistle of Jude and 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

He said that every, man is at liberty 
to treat the Apocalypse according to the 
dictates of his own mind, and the German 
professors do so treat that and every 
other book at this day. He said that if 
the story of Jonah were not in the Bible, 
he would laugh at it, and that the whale 
could have digested Jonah in three days. 

He repudiated the Epistle of James be- 
cause it contradicted that of Paul in the 
matter of faith and works — another proof 
that his ''The just shall live by faith,'' 
was a controversial cry rather than a 
definite conviction. 

He questioned the infallibility of his new 
authority, the Bible, as stoutly as he did 
that of his old authority, the pope. He 
used his reason and extolled its use, but 
he denied its use to others. 

Congregationalists will find no Congre- 
gationalism in Luther. He had no partial- 
ity for juvenile suffrage as a policy of the 
church. He would substitute the Ger- 
man emperor for the Roman pontiff. The 
45 



Zbc IHuman martin Xutber 

destiny of the children which Jesus took 
such pains to make plain, has ever since 
been the despair of the ecclesiastics. 

The pope would damn an infant Protest- 
ant, water or no water ; Luther would save 
all the infant Protestants and Catholics if 
they w'ould only stay long enough in the 
world to be baptized in it. He held with 
Augustine that we are born lumps of per- 
dition, and if we should die in the act of 
being born we should as a logical — theo- 
logical — desert of that act, go straight to 
hell for the glory of God. 

He says : The human will is like a 
beast of burthen. If God mounts it, it 
goes as God wills ; if Satan mounts it, it 
goes as Satan wills. Nor can it choose 
its rider. The riders, God and the devil, 
contend for its possession. 

He gave an impulse to the human mind 
which it will never cease to feel, and yet 
his theory of its dependence would para- 
lyze it forever. He was the founder of 
Protestantism, but it is doubtful whether 
one-tenth of the Protestants of to-day 
would acknowledge his authority in the- 
46 



Iproteatantlsm Xea&0 to Evil0 

ology, and he would not recognize the 
Lutheranism of the present Germany. If 
the world had not gone beyond Luther 
both Luther and Protestantism would 
have been a failure. 

But let us show him the fair play which 
he would show if he had lived in 1883 
instead of in 1483. It is not to our credit 
or to his discredit that he lacked what we 
have, time, four hundred years of it. 
Another four hundred years, and we will 
have said of us what we say of him, and 
of Leo X. ; they were out just four hundred 
years. 

Those four hundred years past and 
these four hundred years to come, and 
all the years, are bringing us back, back, 
back to the words of Luther's Master 
and ours, who will be the world's Master 
yet. 

Monseigneur Capel says Protestantism 
has led to evils, /. ^., evils to Monseigneur 
Capel. What then has he 
to say of Catholicism, which StS 
has led to the greatest of 
evils in his estimation, Protestantism ? 
47 



tlbe IHuman flOartin Xutber 

So did the invention of money, which 
is a root of all evils ; and printing — it has 
done more harm than smallpox, and 
smallpox is innocence in comparison with 
some Protestants and some Catholics. 

Nevertheless we are in favor of the 
newspapers, and money — if one or two 
men do not get the whole of it — and Prot- 
estantism, which insures a fair hearing 
to all the gods and goddesses that are 
coming down on us from the English 
Olympus to poke fun at our Anglican 
snobbery and lead us in the way of sweet- 
ness and light. 

Luther had to contend with sourness 
and darkness, not to speak of King Henry 
VIII., Defender of the Faith, by authority 
of the pope. 

Luther owed something of his success 

to his nationality. A German owes his 

getting on to his being a German ; he has 

Northern blood in his veins and Viking iron 

in his blood. He is anthracitic ; he burns 

slowly, but he burns forever. The rise of 

Protestantism came of its having its rise 

in Germany. Savonarola's movement 
48 



Sfnilim iPowera 



failed because it started in Italy and in 
Savonarola. Calvin failed to carry the 
French partly because they were French, 
and partly because he was Calvin. 

But German though he was, with the 
German brawn and stamina, Luther wore 
out like an American ; only 
he wore out m spite of the 
climate ; we are worn out and torn up by 
the climate. At sixty -three he said, *'I 
am used up." Emperor William and Bis- 
marck have far exceeded that, but they 
have had no such foes to fight as Luther 
had — conscience and that sort of thing. 
He met his last enemy as he had met 
every other, with a shrinking spirit and a 
resolute front. He said he could not see 
how Paul could feel about death so forci- 
bly as he writes. He (Luther) could not 
believe with respect to death as stoutly 
as he preached, or as stoutly as people 
thought he believed. 

What with his physical decline, the 

bloody deeds of fanaticism at Miinster, 

the loose lives of many of his followers, 

and the dissension among them, Luther's 

49 ^ 



Zbc IHuman tlOarttn Xutber 

great heart sinks within him, and he 
thinks, **the latter days of Christ have 
come, and the last grand assault of the 
devil " is about to take place. 

His confidence in the devil disputes the 
ascendency with his faith in God, and he 
exclaims: *M ardently hope that amidst 
these internal dissensions, Jesus Christ 
will hasten the day of his coming and 
crumble the whole universe into dust/' 

**I am feeble and weary of life, and 
would fain bid adieu to the world which is 
given over to the evil one.'' 

'* Rather than live forty years Td give 
up my chance of paradise." 

He believes the world, like himself, is 
approaching its end. A friend says the 
Emperor Charles will live to eighty-four. 
Luther replies, '*The world itself will 
not last so long. Ezekiel tells to the con- 
trary. If we drive forth the Turk, the 
prophecy of Daniel will be fulfilled, and 
then you may rely on it, the day of judg- 
ment is at hand." 

Over three hundred years have passed 
and the Turk has just made a pretty good 
SO 



Jfatlina ©owera 



fight of it, and there is no likelihood of 
his being driven forth. ^ 

Luther lay down to die at Eisleben 
where he was born. He died in harness. 
He had come there to participate in a con- 
ference of his church which, now that he 
was dying, was only beginning to live- 
He preached four times, and revised some 
ecclesiastical regulations. He was an 
ecclesiastic to the last, and an ecclesiastic 
is industrious. 

It was the evening of the seventeenth 
of February, 1546, more than three hun- 
dred years ago. He retired for the night, 
complaining of feebleness and pains and 
inability to sleep. *Mf I could only sleep," 
he said. They give him a soothing drug. 
He slept, slept, and wakened and prayed. 
He told the watchers to ''pray that the 
gospel may extend, for it is menaced by 
the pope and the council of Trent." 

He repeated according to the German 

^In this year (1897) he has made a still better fight than 
against Russia in 1883. But as many of the evils deplored by 
Luther came from the division among Protestants, so the 
Turk's triumph to-day has come because of the lack of 
European concert [Ed.]. 

SI 



XLbc Muman fBlartin Itutber 

custom, three times the words, '' Into thy 
hands I commend my spirit. Thou hast 
redeemed me, O Lord God of truth/' 

His eyes closed suddenly, and he 
swooned away, but the physicians suc- 
ceeded in reviving him, and he took one 
more look on his friends and family. 

He was asked, *'Do you die firm in 
the faith you have taught ? '' He opened 
his eyes wide and looked intently upon 
the old friend who asked the question, 
and answered it in one word, ''Yes." 
It was his last word. There could be 
no last word more becoming to Martin 
Luther. 

He said, '*Yes," and fell asleep. The 
soul of the mighty leader and Protestant 
came back to answer to all the world and 
for all time, ''Yes." Martin Luther stood 
firm. 

He became paler and paler, and colder 
and colder ; his pulse ceased, his breath 
ended with one deep sigh, and his sighing 
ended forever, reminding us of one of his 
most striking and searching utterances, 
"Our faith is an unutterable sigh." 
52 



Zbc IRetroapect anD iproepect 

1. The Roman Catholic Church has not 
regained any nation, or any of the terri- 
tory it lost four hundred 

years ago. ^^^ ^voevcct 

2. It has lost since then 

what gave it half its hold, the temporal 
power. The papal State has disappeared. 

3. It has virtually surrendered in every 
contest with science. St. George Mivart 
and Professor Proctor would not have 
been tolerated by Leo X., nor would he 
have put a cardinal's cap on Newman's 
head. Leo XIII. represents quite another 
age. The stars in their courses have won 
in their fight with the papacy that de- 
stroyed Galileo, who was right ; the 
church moves as well as the world. The 
church moves because the world moves. 

4. Protestantism as a system has made 
no more progress in Catholic countries 
than Catholicism has in Protestant coun- 
tries. 

5. Protestantism has gained one nation, 
and a powerful one. This is the most 
formidable claim that either party can 
make for these four hundred years. 

S3 



Zbc Human fnlartfn Xutbet 

6. However, we should bear in mind 
that this Protestant nation was created by 
emigration, developed by moderation, not 
by conflict as Germany was, and the 
Protestant majority makes no progress 
with the Catholic minority or the Catho- 
lic minority with the Protestant majority. 
But the Catholicism of this country has 
not the grip of that of Italy or France, and 
that of France and Italy is not that of 
France and Italy in Luther's times. 

7. The disintegrated Protestant Ger- 
many of Luther, has been consolidated 
into the first nation of the continent. 
The Luther celebrations in Germany now 
are not religious or ecclesiastical, but 
political, the jubilation of a political power 
of which Luther never dreamed ; but 
Luther unwittingly laid its corner-stone. 

8. The Lutheran branch of Protestant- 
ism is the farthest from being alive of 
any branch of it. The Roman Church 
shows more life at its extremities than 
Luther's church does at its heart. 

9. Catholicism has just as much mis- 
sionary activity as Protestantism. 

54 



XLbc 1Retro6pect anD ©roepect 

10. In comparing the two forms of 
Christianity, Catholicism and Protestant- 
ism, we should bear in mind that Catholi- 
cism has no discussion within itself,^ Prot- 
estantism carries with it many questions, 
serious and frivolous, ecclesiastical, theo- 
logical, moral, and social, that are grinding 
on one another and must be settled with. 
We are necessarily retarded by the tem- 
porary consequence of a right position ; 
they are helped by the temporary ad- 
vantage of a wrong position. Give us 
time enough and the day is ours. The 
present is on their side ; the future is on 
ours. Protestantism has nothing to fear 
from Romanism but something to fear 
from — Protestantism. 

11. As neither Romanism nor Protest- 
antism is what it was in Luther's day, the 
final result in the far future will not be the 
Protestantism or the Romanism of our day. 

^This can hardly be said at the present time (1897), at least 
In this country. As is well known there is a very distinct di- 
vergence of opinion between Archbishop Ireland and Arch- 
bishop Corrigan. The truth seems to be that there is more 
unity among Protestants than appears, and far less among 
Roman Catholics [Ed.]. 

55 



Zbc IHuman nuartln Xutber 

12. In that final result we shall have 
no part or lot. We are not responsible 
for the four hundred years past or the 
four hundred years to come. We are 
only responsible for a few brief years, 
each for his own conscience, to his own 
conscience, for what that conscience re- 
quires him to believe and to be. 

Yes, Martin Luther's followers stand 
firm by the logic of his teachings ; the in- 
alienable right of every conscience to 
have its own creed, or to have none, with 
no other conscience daring to molest or 
make it afraid, and that without the 
Christian's morality there can be no such 
thing as the Christian religion, and with- 
out religion, no religious authority can be 
accepted. 

''Here we take our stand. We can do 
no otherwise," and we found our confi- 
dence in the future of our cause on the 
noble sentiments of Luther's hymn : 

A safe stronghold our God is still, 
A trusty shield and weapon ; 

He'll help US' clear from every ill 
That hath us now o'ertaken. 

56 



Zbc 1Retto0pcct anD iproapect 

With force of arms we nothing can, 
Full soon were we down trodden ; 

But for us fights the proper man, 
Whom God himself hath bidden. 

Ask ye, who is this same? 
Christ Jesus is his name, 
The Lord Sabaoth's Son ; 
He and no other one. 
Shall conquer in this battle. 



57 



JOHN WESLEY 



T 



II 



HE name of the man who founded the 
Methodist Church is John Wesley. 
The man who did that 

J X u X ^- ^ Tx S^te parentage 

deserves to be studied. It 

will interest and instruct us to make a 

study of his biography.^ 

Where was he born .? At Epworth, 
England. When was he born ? In 1703. 
When did he die ? In 1791. 

His father, rector of the English church 
at Epworth, seems to have been a good 
and faithful father, but his mother had the 
first fashioning of the boy Jack, as he was 
called, and gave him his first impressions, 
ideas, thoughts, impetus. Susannah Wes- 
ley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, 
and seventeen others — let us speak of 
her with reverence and think of her as 
one of the great women, and one of the 
mighty mothers in Israel. 

^I shall follow Tyerman's "Life and Times of Wesley." 

61 



5obn WLcBlc^ 



She ruled well her own household. 
She taught John Wesley at one year of 
age that he had a right to cry, but that he 
had no right to bawl and yell and scream. 
This was tact. She taught self-restraint 
at one year of age. She never gave her 
children what they cried for. They were 
washed and put to bed at eight o'clock, 
after they had said the Lord's Prayer. 
She nipped all rudeness and selfishness in 
the bud. She acted upon the proverb, 
** A child left to himself bringeth his 
mother to shame'' (Prov. 29 : 15). 

At six years of age John was plucked 
as a brand from the burning parsonage. 
At eight years of age he came near dying 
of smallpox. 

He spent five years at a good school in 
London, during which time he never had 
a mouthful of food more solid 
than bread. Why? Because 
it was the custom for the older boys to 
take not only their share of the meat, but 
the share of the younger boys also. 

Little England is a little pig — ditto, 

little America. This is one of the evi- 
62 



Qxtott> TUnix^cteit^ 



dences that we are evolved from pigs — we 
behave so like them. 

At this London school he attracted at- 
tention by qualities for which he was 
afterward famous — industry and persist- 
ency and the remarkable patience with 
which he bore insult and injuries. While 
his elders were knocking him around and 
stealing his meat, he treated his juniors to 
an oration. He was fond of getting them 
together and haranguing them. When 
asked by his teacher why he preferred the 
society of his inferiors to that of his equals 
among the boys, his reply was, ** Better 
to reign in hell than serve in heaven.*' 

He went from the London school to 
Oxford University. He was entitled to 
forty pounds a year for hav- 
ing attended this school, the ,^^^^X 
Charterhouse ; such schools 
are the glory of England. His entrance 
was obtained by the Duke of Buckingham. 
Here he was at Oxford University, twenty- 
one years of age, in poor health and in 
debt, bleeding at the nose and bleeding at 
the pocket. And here comes a letter from 
63 



5obn mcBlc^ 



his mother — no money in it. She had 
none to give. Her husband had been in 
prison for debt. Her boy had been 
entered at the London school as the son 
of an impoverished clergyman. 

But the words of a mother to her boy — 
they are *' apples of gold in pictures of 
silver." 

Dear jack: I am uneasy because I have 
not heard from you. 

Aye, uneasy lies the head that wears 
the crown of motherhood. 

Inform me of the state of your health and 
whether you have any reasonable hopes of being 
out of debt. I am most concerned for the good, 
generous man that lent you ten pounds, and am 
ashamed to beg a month or two longer, since he 
has been "so kind as to grant us so much time 
already. We were amused by your uncle's coming 
from India, but I suppose these fancies are laid 
aside. 

I wish there had been anything in it, for then 
perhaps it would have been in my power to have 
provided for you. But if all things fail I hope 
God will not forsake us. We have still his good 
providence to depend on. 

Dear Jack, be not discouraged. Do your duty. 
64 



1ttl0 Companions 



Keep dose to your studies and hope for better 
days. Perhaps after all we shall pick up a few 
crumbs for you before the end of the year. 
Dear Jacky, I beseech Almighty God to bless 

SUSANNAH WESLEY. 

When she was dying she said, '^ Chil- 
dren, as soon as I am released, sing a song 
of praise." 

At twenty-four years of age we find 
him shaking off uncongenial acquaint- 
ances and choosing only such as were in 
accord with his spiritual-mindedness. 

He says that when he resolved to be 

not a nominal but a real Christian, he 

found that his acquaintances 

^ ^ J Ws Companfons 

were as ignorant of God as 

he was. Only he knew his own igno- 
rance and they did not know theirs. Even 
their harmless conversation damps his 
good resolutions. 

So he ceased to return their visits and 
their visits ceased. That was the right 
way. When you pray to be delivered 
from evil, answer your prayer by keeping 
out of evil company. If you would not 

E 65 



5obn WicBlc^ 



be led into temptation, do not allow your- 
self to be led into the society of the 
tempter. 

At twenty-four years of age he became 
curate to his father, who was sixty-five 
and palsied. 

One of his earliest sermons is char- 
acteristically outspoken and plain-spoken. 
He reproves those preachers who wash 
their hands of stubborn texts that will not 
bend to their purpose, or texts that too 
plainly touch upon the reigning vices of 
the places in which they preach. His 
congregation is described as ** unpolished 
wights, as dull as asses, and impervious 
as stones." It may be easy enough to 
find sermons in stones, but it is not so 
easy to preach sermons to stones. 

At twenty-six he became a tutor in the 

University of Oxford, and here began 

what is called the *^Metho- 

""'i^oTemenr dist Movement. " The place 

was Oxford, England, the 

time, 1729. 

It was begun by Charles, not by John. 

Charles Wesley was a fellow of Christ 
66 



Zbc /llbetboDiat /nbovement 



College. He had suddenly turned from a 
life of frivolity to one of pious observ- 
ances. He left his frolicsome behavior 
and began to attend the communion with 
great regularity. 

His brother John joined him, as did a 
few others. Their regularity, so con- 
spicuous in the midst of a universal ir- 
regularity, drew the name ** Methodists,'' 
and says John Wesley, ''As the name 
' Methodist ' was new and quaint, it clave 
to them immediately and from that time." 
He says it was given in allusion to an 
ancient sect of physicians who taught 
that almost all diseases might be cured by 
a specific method of diet and exercise. 

The name was used in England long 
before it was applied to Wesley and his 
friends. In a sermon preached in 1639, 
the preacher exclaimed, ''Where are now 
our plain packstaff Methodists, who esteem 
all flowers of rhetoric in sermons no 
better than stinking weeds.'' 

If there be "Methodists," or any others, 
who so esteem the flowers of rhetoric, 
they are wrong. Jesus Christ used a 
67 



5obn WiCBlc^ 



flower of rhetoric when he said, '* Behold 
the lilies of the field." 

Whatever be the origin of the word, 
there is no doubt of its being applied to 
Charles Wesley's following at Oxford, or 
its becoming then and there and thence- 
forth a name of inextinguishable power 
and imperishable honor. So, as the first 
disciples of Christ were called Christians 
in derision at Antioch, the first to lift up 
a standard against the license of the 
church of that day were derisively called 
Methodists at Oxford. 

While the first step and stand were 
taken by Charles, the leadership fell upon 
John, for the very simple reason that 
John was a born leader and Charles was 
not ; John was the founder of the Metho- 
dist Church. 

At this period John Wesley was twenty- 
six years of age, and is described as 

having an air of authority, 
Wis peraonalftie , ^ ^ . u 

but not of arrogance. He 

was handsome and spiritual-looking ; his 

hair was long and silken ; his eye sparkled 

with benevolence and decision blended. 
68 



1Ht6 IPeraonalit^ 



The impress of his glorious mother was 
upon him. He was such a gentleman as 
only such a mother can train. A move- 
ment which was destined to surpass all 
other Protestant movements in taking 
hold of the ignorant masses was begun 
by a man of the highest education. The 
man who founded the Methodist Church 
was a learned man, a scholar, a school- 
made man as distinguished from what is 
called a self-made man. Every man is a 
self-made man who makes the most of his 
circumstances. 

As we have seen, Methodism was 
organized in 1729. In 1733 there were 
twenty-seven Methodists, followers of 
Wesley, at Oxford. These were soon 
reduced to five, and but for John Wesley 
they would have been reduced to nobody. 

It is interesting to note the constancy 
and persistency of Wesley, at thirty 
years of age, in contrast with the incon- 
stancy of his followers. They were 
perpetually falling away or running away ; 
they had not the root of the matter in 
them. 

69 



5obn iKHeele^ 



Wesley attributes his first spiritual im- 
pulse to the Moravians and obtained his 
first idea of a religious organization from 
them. While the germ was Moravian, 
the modifications and the additions were 
such as circumstances and his own 
sagacity suggested. The Methodist class 
was suggested by the Moravian band. 
Indeed Wesley established both band and 
class. 

The movement was no sooner under 
way than the wicked rose up against it 
and the righteous took counsel against it. 

At Bristol, England, while he was 
preaching the mob shouted, cursed, and 
swore around the place. A 
Catholic priest in the con- 
gregation cried out, '*Thou art a hypo- 
crite, a devil, an enemy to the church!" 
A curate of the Church of England, on the 
other hand, published him as a Papist. 
The bells were rung to drown his voice. 

He was refused admittance to the sacra- 
mental table of the Church of England, 
together with his brother Charles and 

their converts. 

70 



niobbeD 



At Pensford a bull was forced among 
the people, and the table on which Wesley 
stood was torn to atoms by the savages. 
At Whitechapel a herd of cattle was driven 
among the worshipers. At Cardiff, while 
Charles Wesley was preaching, women 
were kicked, and their clothes were set on 
fire by the rockets thrown into the con- 
gregation. The Bible was wrested from 
the preacher's hands, one of the mob de- 
claring that he would persecute the Metho- 
dists to his dying day, if he had to go to 
hell for it (as he probably did). The 
houses in which the preachers lodged were 
assaulted and the windows smashed in. 
At Hampton women were pulled down- 
stairs by the hair of their heads, and men 
were thrown into a hole full of noisome 
reptiles. A ruffian struck him on one 
cheek and he turned the other also, which 
so abashed the ruffian that he dropped his 
head and skulked away. 

At Wolsal John Wesley was completely 

in the hands and power of the mob, and 

it is marvelous that he escaped alive. 

He was struck several times with an oaken 

71 



5obn TKHeeleis 



club. One struck him on the breast, and 
another on the mouth with such force that 
the blood gushed out. He was dragged 
through the streets and pulled by the hair, 
one man exclaiming, *^ What soft hair he 
has!" 

He asked them if they were willing to 
hear him speak, whereupon they shouted : 
''No, no; knock out his brains. Down 
with him ! Kill him ! '' 

Wesley asked: ** What evil have I done? 
Which of you all have I wronged in word 
or deed ? " Then he began to pray, and 
just then the ringleader of the mob turned 
suddenly in his favor and delivered him. 
*' Follow me,'' he said, ''and no man shall 
hurt a hair of your head." 

This man was so impressed with Wes- 
ley's appearance and behavior that he not 
only delivered him out of the hands of the 
mob but afterward became one of his fol- 
lowers and lived to the age of eighty-five 
in the fear of God, and was always telling 
how God stayed his hand when it was 
lifted against Wesley's life. When he 
was asked what he thought of Wesley 
72 



flOobbcD 



during the assault, he replied : ** I thought 
he was a man of God and God was on his 
side, when so many of us could not kill 
one man." 

Of the same peril Wesley himself says : 
*' A little before ten o'clock God brought 
me safe to Wednesbury, having lost one 
flap of my waistcoat, and a little skin from 
one of my hands. It came into my mind, 
that, if they should throw me into the 
river it would spoil the paper in my pocket. 
For myself, I did not doubt that I should 
swim across, having but a thin coat and a 
light pair of boots.'' 

A woman who had been one of his con- 
verts fell away and turned so against him 
that she resolved to do him an injury. 
She accordingly invited him to her house, 
threw him down and cut off his long 
beautiful locks on one side. And so he 
appeared in the pulpit, those who sat on 
his cropped side wondering at his taste, 
and those who sat on the other side not 
knowing that he had been cropped. 

Then the Pilate of the State joined 
hands with the Herod of the Church, and 
73 



3obn Wicelc>^ 



John Wesley and his friends were charged 
by the civil authority with inciting the dis- 
orders of which they were 

of'Ste the victims, and arraigned 
before the magistrates. At 
one place a wagon-load of Methodists were 
carried before a magistrate, who asked 
what they had done. Then some one said : 
*' They have converted my wife. She 
used to have such a tongue ! Now she is 
as quiet as a lamb.'' Whereupon the 
magistrate replied: '^Take them away 
and let them convert all the scolds of the 
town." 

The Church of England pulpits were 
closed against him, and clergymen of the 
Church of England who affiliated with 
Wesley were insulted during the service. 

The Rev. Charles Manning's church- 
yard was used for fighting cocks. People 
turned their backs upon him while he was 
reading prayers or preaching. His choir 
was obstreperous — the only obstreperous 
choir I ever heard of. One man came 
into the church during the service with a 
pipe in his mouth and a pot of beer in his 
74 



/IBatrimonis 



hand. Some sat in the belfry ringing the 
bells and spitting on the heads of the 
worshipers. 

He was pursued with what he describes 
as *' pious venom." Every conceivable 
variety of calumny was set afloat against 
him by some of his own household of 
faith, of whom he exclaims: *'And yet 
these are good Christians, these whisper- 
ers, talebearers, backbiters, evil speakers. 
Just such Christians as murderers and 
adulterers.'' Backbiters and murderers 
classed together ! The worst of these 
backbiters who tried to murder him was 
his wife. 

You have heard of his matrimonial mis- 
adventure. He married a widow and 
caught a Tartar. And her 
tart reflections, he says, 
**Like drops of eating water on the mar- 
ble, at length have worn my spirits 
down." Yet he says he could not say, 
''Take thy plague away from me," but 
only, *' Let me be purified, not con- 
sumed." 

She proceeded to purify him by tearing 
75 



5obn "Mcelc^ 



his hair out by the fistful. She was once 
caught by one of Wesley's friends in the 
act of dragging him about the floor by the 
hair of his head. She made accusations 
against him of the most villainous and 
calumnious kind, but not a particle of the 
mud sticks to his name. 

She signs her letters: ** Your affection- 
ate wife," and her tombstone says, **She 
was a woman of exemplary piety." 

But then you know a tombstone is like 
a corporation — it has no body to be burned 
or soul to be damned. I heard lately of a 
church that starved their preacher to 
death and are now collecting for his monu- 
ment. He asked for bread and they gave 
him a stone — a tombstone. 

The widower of this specimen of exem- 
plary piety says he believed the Lord over- 
ruled this painful business to his good. '' If 
she had been a better wife I might have 
been unfaithful in the great work to which 
God has called me." But I have a higher 
opinion of John Wesley than to think his 
fidelity to his work depended upon his 
having his hair pulled by a vicious wife, 
76 



jflBatrtmoni^ 



and a higher opinion of Divine Providence 
than to think he would require such pen- 
ance. He might well thank God for mak- 
ing him an itinerant preacher, with such 
*' a charge to keep '* as he had. 

He wrote in favor of celibacy. 

Nothing could daunt the purpose or 
dampen the ardor of the glorious man who 
founded the Methodist Church. 

He had a lamblike spirit, but he was 
lion-mettled. Once when driving to a 
preaching appointment, they came to 
where the sands were overflowed and 
perilously deep with water. The driver 
hesitated, but Wesley put his head out of 
the window and exclaimed, ''Take the 
sea, take the sea," and in they went. 
The driver who tells the story, says that 
he expected to be drowned. 

Wesley asked, '*What is your name, 
driver ? " 

''Peter.'' 

" Peter, fear not ; thou shalt not sink.'' 

And they did not, but passed safely 
over, and Wesley, drenched to the skin, 
proceeded to fill his appointment. 
77 



Sobn TKHeslei^ 



No sooner did the attacks of the mob 

cease than he was attacked by a fever. 

The physicians told him he 

Wb (Tonsumfna ^^^^ ^^^^^ Wesley replied 

that he could not, because 
he had several appointments and must 
preach as long as he could speak. And 
off he went, but down he came. For 
three days he lay more dead than alive. 
His tongue swelled, his pulse could not be 
felt; his convulsions were violent. His 
friends abandoned hope. Six days after- 
ward he was up and at it again. He was 
then seventy-two years of age. 

He says of himself, *' I can face the 
north wind at seventy-seven better than 
I could at twenty-seven.'' '* I do not ad- 
mire fair-weather preachers.'' 

Like Luther, Wesley was very fond of 
music. Indeed all the Wesleys were, for 
it was a passion in the family. He at- 
tended the oratorio performances and 
listened to them with rapture, and criti- 
cised their performers wherein he con- 
sidered them at fault. 

But his greater passion was evident here 
78 



B ^etbo&i0t 



too. He reveled in the religious senti- 
ment of the famous oratorios and thought 
this sentiment joined with the music 
might make an impression upon even rich 
and honorable sinners. 

Never was a man more appropriately 
called a *' Methodist/' if that designation 
turns upon the word and 
article of method. A more 
methodical man never lived. He ran all 
to method, intellectually, personally, and 
religiously. He was as methodical as a 
clock. He said : '' Any time for doing a 
thing was no time for doing it.'' 

He wrote by method, talked by method, 
walked by method, went to bed and rose 
by method. His religious devotions were 
performed with all the regularity known 
to a convent, and his secular duties were 
as rigidly conformed to a system as are 
those of a military camp. 

It came of the structure of his mind, 
the necessity of his nature ; it made the 
type of his religion. Formal observance 
was both the cause and the effect of 
spiritual life. 

79 



5obn WiCBlc^ 



He enjoins his followers: '* Let all of 
you meet in band. As soon as the assist- 
ant has fixed your band make it a point 
of conscience never to miss without an 
absolute necessity. If you constantly 
meet your band, I make no doubt that 
you will constantly meet your class. 
Whoever misses his class twice together 
thereby excludes himself, and the preacher 
ought to put out his name." 

His catechism of his preachers was 
close and rigid. 

'*Do you rise at four ? 

*' Do you pray at five ? 

''Do you recommend the five-o'clock 
hour for private prayer ? 

** Do you fast once a week ? 

''Do you constantly attend the church 
and sacraments ? 

"Do you know the Methodist doctrine 
and the Methodist plan ? 

" Do you know the rules of the society 
and the bands ? Do you keep them ? 

"Have you considered the twelve rules 

of a helper, especially the first, tenth, and 

twelfth, and will you keep them ? 
80 



B /RetboMat 



''Will you preach every morning and 
evening, endeavoring not to speak too 
loud or too long, not lolling with your 
elbows ? 

'* Have you read the * Rules for action 
and utterance'? 

''Will you meet the society, the bands, 
the select society, and the leaders of 
bands and classes in every place ? 

"Will you diligently and earnestly in- 
struct the children and visit from house 
to house ? 

" Have you read the ' Minutes ' and are 
you willing to conform to them ? 

" Have you read the ' Sermons ' and the 
* Notes on the New Testament,' the ' Plain 
Account ' and the ' Appeals ' ? 

"Do you take snuff, or tobacco, or 
drams ? " 

To a preacher in Ireland he wrote : 
"Use all diligence to be clean. What- 
ever clothes you wear let them be whole! 
No rents, no tatters, no rags. Mend your 
clothes, or I shall never expect to see you 
mend your lives. Let none ever see a 

ragged Methodist Clean yourselves of 
F 8i 



5obn WicBlc^ 



lice and the itch, you and your families. 
A spoonful of brimstone will cure you of 
the itch/' 

He not only abstained from the use of 
spirituous liquors except as medicine, but 
he denounced them as liquid fire, and 
those who sell them, except for medicine, 
as poisoners and murderers. 

He published in 1760, ** Advice to 

Methodists with regard to Dress." He 

would not advise them 

Concerning 2)rcs0 ^ . .^ , ,, ^1 

to imitate the Quakers in 
those little particularities of dress which 
can answer no possible end but to distin- 
guish them from other people. To be 
singular merely for singularity's sake is 
not the part of the Christian. He did 
advise them to imitate the Quakers in the 
neatness and plainness of their apparel. 
He disapproved of velvets, silks, fine 
linen, jewelry, earrings, finger rings, 
necklaces, lace, ruffles, and all ornamenta- 
tion. 

'' Wear nothing of a glaring color, noth- 
ing made in the height of fashion, nothing 

apt to attract the eyes of bystanders." 
82 



Concerning Dre00 



The biographer asks, *'What will the 
fashionable followers of Wesley say to 
this ? '' They may say that if any cos- 
tume of that period, or of this, is calculated 
to attract the eyes of bystanders, it is that 
of those who array themselves in the 
height of the fashion dictated by John 
Wesley or George Fox. 

If these are not particularities of dress 
which distinguish the wearers from all 
other people, and make them singular, for 
singularity's sake, there is nothing in the 
way of costume that can accomplish that 
object. Moreover, the fact is that that 
object was accomplished. The costume 
of the followers of Wesley made them 
conspicuous and singular, as the costume 
of the followers of George Fox made them 
conspicuous and singular. 

There is just as much singularity in 
being extremely unfashionable as there is 
in being extremely fashionable. Both are 
extremely foolish. There is just as much 
vanity under a religious costume as there 
is under an unreligious or an anti-religious 
costume. 

83 



Jobn WicBlcQ 



There are two classes of people who 
should say nothing about their own piety ; 
those who have some, and those who 
have none. Piety will speak for itself, if 
one has any to speak of. 

In answer to those preachers who said 
they had no taste for reading, Wesley 
said, ** Contract a taste for it, or return 
to your trade." To those who complained 
that they had no books, he offered to give 
books to the value of five pounds. 

They were to give special attention to 
the children, for whom he wrote a volume 
called ''Instructions for Children.'' 'M 
reverence the young, because they may 
be useful after I am dead.'' 

To those who said, *M have no gift for 
this," he replied, ''Gift or no gift, you 
are to do it, else you are not called to be 
a Methodist preacher." 

John Wesley did not believe that igno- 
rance was the mother of devotion. So far 
from believing that, he looked upon it as 
the enemy of devotion, and made war 
upon it as such. 

He set an example of industry and as- 
84 



niB Self-denial 



siduity rarely to be met with in history, and 
insisted that his preachers should follow 
his example. They read and studied sys- 
tematically, daily, and imparted their in- 
formation to others. He told his preachers 
to spend at least five hours in the twenty- 
four in reading the most useful books. 
He made short and sharp work of the plea 
that only the Bible should be read. He 
calls this, ''rank enthusiasm," and in- 
stances a maji who began by reading only 
the Bible and ended by reading neither 
the Bible nor any other book. He told his 
preachers that if they needed no book but 
the Bible, they had gotten beyond Paul ; 
he needed other books. 

The self-denial of the man who founded 
the Methodist church is worthy the ad- 
miration and imitation of all 
who belong to that or any 
other church. He did not call upon others 
to do what he would not do himself ; he 
did not persuade others to give, give, 
give, and never give a penny himself. 

All great religious movements have 
been marked largely by the benevolent 
35 



5obn WicBlc^ 



element ; almsgiving, helping the help- 
less and giving to the poor. The orders 
of the Catholic Church make much of this. 
The Ritualists of England make no less of 
it. All religious brotherhoods and sister- 
hoods are devoted to this idea of benevo- 
lence, even to making it a penance and 
a sacrament and a work meet for repent- 
ance. 

The Methodist movement turned to the 
poor and destitute at once. John Wesley 
sacrificed his own ease and comfort at 
once for their sake. He says he gave 
away all that was left after providing for 
his own necessities. When he received 
thirty pounds a year he gave away all 
over twenty-eight, when he received sixty 
and ninety and one hundred and twenty 
pounds a year, he continued to live on 
twenty-eight, and gave the rest to the 
poor. 

Wesley was as careful to be no finan- 
cial burden to his hearers as was the 
Apostle Paul. He made no charge and 
received no salary, and there was no 
dodge or fraudulent pretention to superi- 



S6 



1H19 SclU^cnial 



ority in this. Salary was recompense, and 
anything in the way of recompense was 
salary. 

A lady presented him with a chaise and 
a pair of horses and left him a legacy of 
one thousand pounds, but it was soon 
gone, given to the poor. His poor sister, 
who had been deserted by what some 
people call a husband, her natural pro- 
tector, applied for some of it, but she was 
too late. He writes : 

*'Dear Patty, you do not consider; 
money never stays with me ; it would 
burn me if it did. I throw it out of my 
hands lest it should find a way into my 
heart." 

He was once too poor to get his 
hair cut. He became the proprietor of a 
large book concern, whose profits were 
also given away in charity and for the 
benefit of the cause he loved so well. 
There is good authority for the statement 
that he gave away more than one hundred 
and fifty thousand pounds after he had es- 
tablished his own book concern. 

He tells his followers: *Mf you are 
87 



3^obn TKHeeleis 



not in pressing want give something. If 
you earn but three shillings a week and 
give a penny of it, you will never want." 
He says he is ashamed of their penuri- 
ousness if they are not, and that if every 
one would give according to his means 
there would be money enough to meet all 
the necessities of all the societies. So 
it is now. He detested rich and stingy 
Christians. 

At the conference of 1766 we find the 
soul of the man who founded the Metho- 
dist Church hectored with 
church debts. The debts 
on the one hundred chapels throughout 
the kingdom amounted to nearly sixty 
thousand dollars. Wesley said: *'We 
shall be ruined if we go on thus." 
Ruined ! Why, bless thy devout soul. 
Saint John, we disciples of the meek and 
lowly Jesus thrive and flourish on a debt 
twice as large as that, on one church, the 
Church of the Blessed Mortgage. 

He writes to one preacher, ''You must 
go to York, Leeds, and Bradford. Our 
rich men subscribe twenty shillings a 
SS 



fin ©eorgia 



year, and neither Boardman, Bumstead, 
nor Oliver, can move them. They want 
a hard-mouthed man. I beg you either 
mend them or end them." 

The difficulty is to either end them or 
mend them. One of them said: **True 
I do not give much, but if you knew how 
it hurts me to give that, you would not 
ask me for any more." 

His three favorite rules, which he 
elaborated in one of his sermons, were, 
**Gain all you can," ''Save all you 
can," ''Give all you can." 

In the spring of 1736 he landed in 
Savannah, Georgia, with his brother 
Charles and three other 
Methodists. Savannah then 
had forty houses. Georgia was a feeble 
colony, and the only foretaste of what 
we are now as a nation was to be found 
in the fact that the highest officeholder 
was accused of stealing the public money. 

His success in Georgia seems to have 

been small. The Indians were obdurate 

and the colonists indifferent to his form of 

religion. Besides, the Moravians were 
89 



5obn Wicelc^ 



before him there as in England, and were 
doing his work in very much his way. 
Worse than all, he got into several rows, 
a row with the ecclesiastical authorities, 
and a row with the civil authorities. The 
upshot of the broil was that Wesley 
escaped by night in a rowboat, and after 
many perils reached England. 

Curiously enough, in Savannah, where 
both Wesley and Whitefield labored, Meth- 
odism has but a feeble hold, while the de- 
nomination planted then and there is the 
largest and the most nearly universal of 
any in the United States. 

His wit was quiet but quick. With him 
wit and wisdom went together ; it was 
witty wisdom and wise wit. 
Once, m the impatience that 
came of his marvelous industry, when 
kept waiting for his carriage he exclaimed, 
*' I have lost ten minutes for ever." 

A friend said, ** You have no need to be 
in a hurry." 

** Hurry! I have no time to be in a 
hurry ! " 

He said to one of his preachers, 
90 



Sball TKHomen preacbl 



*' Tommy, touch that dock. Do you feel 
anything ? '' 

''No/' 

''Now touch that nettle. . . Tommy, 
some men are like docks, stupid, insensi- 
ble ; others are like nettles — touch them 
and they resent it. You are a nettle. 
Tommy ; but I would rather have to do 
with a nettle than a dock.'' 

Once while sitting with some friends at 
the excellent dinner of a rich Methodist, a 
canting preacher rolled up his eyes and 
sighed and said to Wesley : 

" O sir, things are very different from 
what they were formerly. There is very 
little self-denial among Methodists now." 

Wesley replied, "My brother, here is a 
fine opportunity for self-denial." 

We now come upon the question whether 
women have any right to go anywhere in 
the world and preach the 
gospel to any creature, in ^^J,"'" 
the shape of what the biogra- 
pher first calls a "godly female," and 
then a " preacheress." He means a godly 
woman and good preacher by the name 
91 



5obn WicBlc^ 



of Sarah Crosby, who says: ** My soul 
was much comforted in speaking to the 
people, as the Lord has removed all my 
scruples respecting the propriety of my 
acting thus publicly." She may be the 
original of Dinah Morris in '* Adam Bede.'' 

Nothing so forcibly illustrates the rever- 
ence in which Wesley was held by his 
followers as the fact that this good woman 
and good preacher after having all her 
scruples about preaching removed by the 
Lord, writes to ask Wesley what he thinks 
of her conduct — in a word, if he concurs 
with the Lord. 

Wesley's answer is worth your hearing. 
It is written with a caution which con- 
tinues unto this day, and which very well 
represents the attitude of some toward 
the question in at least three great de- 
nominations. 

*M think you have not gone too far," — 

she had gone so far as to preach to several 

hundred people to their great delight and 

edification, — *' you could not well do less." 

He tells her to tell them that she does not 

take upon herself any such character as 
92 



Ml0 Peculiar Zwc ot Ipleti^ 

that of a preacher, she just tells them 
what is in her heart. '* I do not see that 
you have broken any law. Go on calmly 
and steadily." 

She did go on till her death in 1804, 
when there were several women preachers. 
Such, says his biographer, '* was the com- 
mencement of female preaching"; he 
means preaching by women among the 
Methodists. It was never sanctioned by 
Wesley's Conference, but was practised 
to the end of Wesley's life. 

To another he says, her justification 
lies in her having what he had, *'an ex- 
traordinary call." 

** It is plain to me that the whole work 
of God termed Methodism is an extraordi- 
nary dispensation of his Providence." 

He should have put his right to ordain 
the superintendents he sent to America 
on the same ground, and saved himself 
from an ecclesiastical tangle which is the 
only muddy spot in his clear head. 

His peculiar type of piety I shall not go 
into in a controversial way. There are 
as many types of Christian piety as there 
93 



5obn WLcelc^ 



are kinds of temperament, varieties of 
Christian culture, and schools of Chris- 
tian exegesis. This must be 
aobn mcsicB's acknowledged by all who ac- 
of ipfet^ knowledge that George Fox 
was as clearly entitled to be 
called a Christian as John Knox, or Au- 
gustine as Luther, or Channing as Calvin, 
or Elizabeth Fry as Madame Swetchine, 
or John Wesley as Oliver Cromwell, or 
Dr. Peabody as Dr. Pusey. 

Concerning one peculiarity of John 
Wesley's peculiar type of piety there can 
be no question, and with respect to it 
there can be no controversy. Whatever 
else his theory of holiness meant, it 
meant, keep your fingers out of your 
neighbor's pocket ; whatever else his idea 
of perfection implied, it implied perfect 
honesty. 

'* Never think of being religious unless 
you are honest.'' *' What has a thief to 
do with religion ? " '* It is high time to 
return to the plain word : He that feareth 
God and worketh righteousness is ac- 
cepted of him." 

94 



1Kl6 ipecullar XL^c of piets 

He believed in mixing politics and re- 
ligion in such proportions as to give re- 
ligion the ascendency and keep politics 
from putrefaction. 

So you see that whatever else his per- 
fectionism meant, it meant, keep your 
fingers out of your neighbor's pocket if 
you love your neighbor as yourself. Who- 
ever it may designate as free from sin, it 
puts the brand of sinners deserving to be 
damned upon all venal politicians and cor- 
rupt officeholders, especially if they hold 
one office in the Church, and one in the 
State at the same time — a union of Church 
and State which does not seem to weigh 
very heavily upon the consciences of those 
American Christians who are conscien- 
tiously opposed to the union of Church 
and State. 

His perfection included the perfect keep- 
ing of the Golden Rule, and excludes 
Christian bankers who receive the hard 
earnings of the poor one day and close 
their doors the next. In one of his ad- 
dresses to his followers he exclaimed : 
**Who does as he would be done by in 
95 



5obn TOeelei^ 



buying and selling ? He who keeps not 
this law is written down a knave." 

The ticket which John Wesley gave to 
the class meeting was written in these 
words by his own hand, **I believe the 
bearer to be one who fears God and works 
righteousness.'' But with all his plain 
preaching many would still profess relig- 
ion and practise dishonesty. 

Wesley noted what preachers do not 
make as much note of as they should. It 
is the small amount of accurate knowl- 
edge communicated by the preacher to his 
hearers. He was amazed at the ignorance 
of his hearers, on topics in which he took 
the greatest pains to instruct them. 

*'I study to speak as plainly as I can, 
yet I frequently meet with those who 
have been my hearers for many years, 
who are ignorant of the nature of re- 
pentance, faith, and holiness.*' 

After all his plain preaching and explicit 
teaching he says most of them have a 
religion which consists of a sort of con- 
fidence that ''Christ will justify them 

while they live to themselves." 
96 



Ba a ipteacber 



Wesley as a preacher is worthy of 
study. He was clear of ornament, direct, 
and lucid. He could be ele- 
gant and simple without 
being effeminate. His education was not 
an enervation. There is that strength in 
his language which is inseparable from the 
language of those who use language as a 
means to an end instead of as an end. 

He was searching and severe without 
reveling in phraseological severity. He 
was too good a fisher of men to suppose 
that he could catch them with the mere 
terminology of professional preaching. 
Like his Master, he used his greatest 
severity on the most polished. 

Once he preached to an audience of 
elegant rascals, "Ye serpents, ye gener- 
ation of vipers, how can ye escape the 
damnation of hell ? " He was told that 
that was suitable for Billingsgate. He 
replied: 'Mn Billingsgate I should preach 
from the text, ' Behold the Lamb of God 
which taketh away the sins of the 
world."' 

He reveals knowledge of human nature 
G 97 



5obn 'Mcelc^ 



and tact in controlling it. Speaking of 
Billingsgate fish market, whence we get 
the word, Wesley and a friend were 
standing near it once while two women 
were bandying the worst epithets of the 
place, when his friend said, '* Come, sir, 
let us go ; I cannot stand this." 

Wesley replied, *'Stay, Sammy, stay 
and learn how to preach." 

Wesley^s movement, like those of 
Finney and other revivalists, was accom- 
panied by physical and men- 
TmSS tal effects which are now 
generally regarded as not 
only unnecessary, but mischievous. There 
is no better evidence of their being both 
preventable and unnecessary than the 
fact that nothing of the kind has ever 
been seen at Mr. Moody's meetings, al- 
though they have been composed of the 
very class most fruitful in these spasms 
and convulsions. 

This movement, like every other re- 
ligious movement, drew a certain tem- 
perament, attracted and repelled, fasci- 
nated and alienated, as it does to this day, 
98 



^Msicnl lettcctB ot bis Iprcacbina 

and as every denomination does to this 
day. 

John Wesley believed that no special 
form of church government is commanded 
in the New Testament, and was quite 
content to let every person be persuaded 
in his own mind as to which was best, or 
even to live and die good Christians with- 
out ever knowing which was best. 

Wesley's movement differs from that 
of all great religious reformers in this : it 
was an attempt at a reformation without 
a secession. Herein it failed and herein 
Wesley was involuntarily and uncon- 
sciously inconsistent with himself. He 
says his design was to leave his followers 
in the lap of their mother, the Church of 
England. But his American followers 
had no mother. I have a lively appreci- 
ation of those who have a mother church, 
but I have more sympathy with those 
who have no mother church. 

Wesley said he dared not separate 

from the Church of England ; it would 

be a sin to do so ; but it would be no less 

a sin for him not to vary from it in preach- 

99 



5obn TWleBles 



ing abroad, praying extempore, and or- 
ganizing societies. His preachers were 
forbidden to baptize or administer the 
sacraments. They were extraordinary 
messengers of God, not to supersede the 
ordinary messengers, but to provoke 
them to jealousy. 

But he did not stop there. His brother 
Charles implored him, as he implored his 
preachers, 'Mn God's name, stop there." 
Charles and others, both in the English 
Church and among the Methodists, main- 
tained that ordination was separation ; but 
John Wesley could not see it in that light, 
although he seems to have foreseen its 
working, for he writes in 1786 at eighty- 
three years of age : 

*' The preachers of a dissenting spirit 
will probably after our death set up for 
themselves and draw away disciples after 
them.'' 

To such preachers he unwittingly gave 
his sanction in the most effective and 
solemn manner. He ordained and set 
them apart as superintendents and thus 
qualified and authorized them to administer 
100 



t>Meicnl iBttccte of bis Ipreacbing 

the sacraments to the fifteen thousand 
American Methodists. These were soon 
called bishops. The name of the office 
was changed but its nature remained the 
same, a superintendency. The number 
of bishops necessarily increased, also the 
number of those who intended to be, the 
Lord willing, and if they knew their own 
hearts. 

Charles Wesley was right ; ordination 
was separation. John Wesley had pro- 
moted what he dreaded. He set up the 
American Methodists, and they set up 
themselves. So that Wesley may be 
said to be the only involuntary founder 
of a great religious society the world has 
ever known. He builded greater than he 
knew. 

Calvin did what he intended to do when 
he organized a Church and State of his 
own at Geneva ; Luther rejoiced in leaving 
his reformation stamped with his name ; 
Knox gloried in the separation and inde- 
pendence of Presbyterianism in Scotland ; 
the English Church was a popular seces- 
sion of national proportions ; the boast of 

lOI 



5obn mcBlCQ 



Puritanism is that of a new sect in a new 
land ; but Wesley's fame is that of the 
founder of an independent denomination 
as powerful to-day as any of these, who 
died denying its necessity and opposing 
its formation. 

Tyerman calls Wesley the autocrat of 
the Methodists ; and he certainly was. 
His reply to those who com- 
plained of this and wished to 
share in Methodist legislation, is interest- 
ing. It contains a history of his autocracy 
and of early Methodism as well, in a nut- 
shell. 

'Mn November, 1738, several persons 

came to me in London and desired me to 

advise and pray with them. I said if you 

will come on Thursday night, I will help 

you as well as 1 can. More and more 

then desired to meet with them, till they 

were increased to many hundreds. Here 

commenced my power, namely, a power 

to appoint when and where and how they 

should meet, and to remove those whose 

life showed they had no desire to flee from 

the wrath to come." 
102 



iauiet power 



The fact is, that authority with Wes- 
ley was an individuality and a necessity. 
He was one of those great men whose 
mental organization fitted them for doing 
what Divine Providence gave them an 
opportunity to do. He followed his bent 
in obeying his call. 

His call was just what he regarded that 
of the women whom he encouraged to 
preach and that of his lay preachers, ** an 
extraordinary call," and like all extraor- 
dinary calls it only comes to those who 
are extraordinarily adapted for obeying it. 

John Wesley rises before us a religious 
force of marvelous quietness. He was a 
wonderful example of quiet- 
ness and confidence. He 
studied to be quiet. The noise of his 
movement was made by his enemies, and 
with them rests the whole blame and 
shame thereof. His was the quietest ex- 
hibition of power of which we have any 
account. He brandished no sword whose 
glitter stirred the blood ; he bestrode no 
war horse that neighed courage to its rider ; 

he led no party whose cheers supported 
103 



Jobn Wlcslc^ 



the spirits. He was no stormy and dra- 
matic Luther. He was no Cromwell, put- 
ting his enemies to the sword in the name 
of the Lord. He was no Knox, tearing 
down churches to get rid of their mem- 
bers. He was no Calvin — he did not burn 
anybody for disagreeing with him. 

The oak under which John Wesley 
preached his first sermon in America is 
still standing. The system which he there 
planted has struck its roots deep in the civ- 
ilization of the republic, and its branches 
have gone out into all the land, and its 
leaves will be for the healing of the nations 
long, long after the oak in Georgia has 
fallen and disappeared. 

Others may be named before him as 
theologians, as philosophers, as preachers ; 
but no man of history had a more elevating 
and commanding character, a more Christ- 
like life, and no man among them all pro- 
duced a more enduring or more benefi- 
cent influence upon his fellow-men than 
the man who founded the Methodist 
Church. 

Tyerman calls him, at eighty years of 
104 



1H16 Beatb 



age, *' a flying evangelist.'' A flying evan- 
gelist at eighty years of age ! Do we hear 
that ? We who are forever complaining 
and whining over our poor little contempt- 
ible services, what do we think of that for 
zeal and consecration ? 

We have hurried through his glorious 
life, and now come to his glorious death. 
He died with his armor on. 
He died in the midst of the 
battle, at the head of his hosts, under the 
banner of the cross. It was more a trans- 
lation than a death. He was eighty-eight 
years of age. 

His beautiful face retained its beauty to 
the last, his eye its lustre, his form its 
symmetry, his spirits their elasticity, his 
intellect its vigor, his conscience its keen- 
ness, his heart its benevolence, his Meth- 
odism its fervor, his faith in Christ its 
steadfast zeal. 

He tottered on the pulpit stairway, 
whereupon the whole congregation burst 
into tears. 

He had his wish that he so often ex- 
pressed in his favorite verses : 



5obn WLcBlc^ 



Oh that without one lingering groan 
I may the welcome word receive, 

My body with my charge lay down, 
And cease at once to work and live. 

But when he ceased to work he began 
to live. Both he and his work will live 
forever. 

It was the morning of the first of March, 
1791, when the messenger came for him 
and found him singing : 

I'll praise my maker while I've breath ; 
And when my voice is lost in death, 

Praise shall employ my nobler powers ; 
My days of praise shall ne'er be past, 
While life and thought and being last, 

Or immortality endures. 

Utterly exhausted, but inexpressibly 
happy, he looked out upon the watchers 
standing around his bed, and said, '* Pray 
and praise." They sank upon their knees 
and obeyed his request, then rose and 
bent over him. He shook hands with 
each and said farewell, but still he 
lingered. 

The lingering sunset of that lofty life 

filled the room with light and peace. 
106 



1Kt0 Deatb 



He exclaimed, '*The Lord of hosts is 
with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. 
Pray and praise.'* 

Again they fell on their knees around 
the chariot of the ascending Elijah, and 
again they rose and gathered around to 
listen to his parting words. 

So the night wore away and the morn- 
ing came — and joy cometh in the morning. 
It was the morning of an immortal day to 
him. He exclaimed, 'M'll praise — I'll 
praise," and at last he said, ''Farewell," 
and the chariot started. 

His body has long since gone to decay 
in the midst of the great world of London, 
but the name which I there saw passing 
away with the crumbling stone, is written 
on the hearts of millions in imperishable 
reverence. 

The church that was so cruel to herself 
as to close her pulpits against him, re- 
ceives a monument to his memory in the 
most venerable of her cathedrals. So is 
his cause vindicated and his wrongs re- 
dressed. 

By the humble grave in City Road, by 
107 



5obn Wicelc^ 



the marble medallion in Westminster Ab- 
bey, and above all by the vast instru- 
mentality that he left behind to carry on 
his work, we are reminded of the man who 
founded the Methodist Church, gathered 
as wheat fully ripe and fully ready for the 
reaper. 

We bend to-day o'er a hallowed form, 

And our tears fall quietly down, 
As we look again on the warrior face, 
With its tranquil peace and its patient grace, 

And hair like a silver crown. 

We know through what labors his hands have 
passed. 

Through what rugged places his feet, 
And we joy in the presence of his brow so white, 
As radiant now with heaven's own light, 

As it shines in the ripened wheat. 

Then faithfully toil that in death we may come, 

Not only with blossoms sweet. 
Not bent with doubts or burthened with fears, 
Or with dead, dry husks of life's wasted years, 

But laden with golden wheat. 



io8 



NORMAN MACLEOD 



Ill 



THE great-grandfather of our subject, 
Donald Macleod, lived in the moun- 
tain solitudes of the 
Island of Skye, not far 
from Dunvegan Castle. He was ''a good 
man, and the first to introduce regular 
family worship/' This grandfather was 
educated for the church, and became min- 
ister of the Highland parish which made 
the subject of ''Reminiscences of a High- 
land Parish/' He had a small salary and 
a large family. 

Sixteen children were born in the 
manse ; in the rugged and romantic home 
of Morven they had their ''bringing up." 
The minister's piety was earnest, health- 
ful, and genial. He delighted to make all 
around him happy. The boys had their 
classics, and the girls their needlework, 
but there was no grudging of their enjoy- 
ments. "In the winter evenings," says 
III 



Ulorman tiQacleoD 



his biographer, ''the minister would tune 
his violin, strike up a swinging reel, and 
call on the lads to lay aside their books 
and the girls their sewing, and all would 
dance with a will to his hearty music.'' 
This was followed by family worship, 
which ended the day with its round of 
duties and pleasures. 

One of these sixteen children was the 
father of our subject, in many respects 
his prototype. He had tact and common 
sense, pathos and humor, and few could 
resist the tenderness of his appeals from 
the pulpit. 

In the excellent memoir of Norman 
Macleod written by his brother. Rev. 
Donald Macleod, and dedi- 
cated to their mother, then 
in her ninety-first year, we find that the 
mother was a powerful element in the 
formation of his character. She was a 
centennial growth of the most noble 
country of the thistle. 

The discipline of the children was left 
to his mother, who was their companion 
and instructor at home and their constant 

112 



Wis nootber 



correspondent in later life. Dr. Macleod 
said : 

''We were seldom formally lectured on 
the subject of religion, but a religious at- 
mosphere was created which we uncon- 
sciously imbibed. . . My mother has been 
my best earthly friend, and God knows 
the heartfelt, profound veneration 1 have 
for her character. 

** Were I asked what there was in my 
parents' teaching and training which did 
us all so much good, I would say it was 
love and truth. Our parents were both so 
real and human. There were no cranks, 
twists, crotchets, isms or systems of any 
kind. They gave us a blowing-up when 
needed, but passed by trifles, failures, and 
infirmities, without making a fuss. 

''Christianity was taken for granted, not 
forced with scowl and frown. I never 
heard my father speak of Calvinism, 
Arminianism, Presbyterianism, or Episco- 
pacy, or exaggerated doctrinal differences. 
He might have made me a slave to any 
ism. He left me free to love Christ and 
Christians." 

H 113 



lHorman fiRacleoD 



In Scotland to this day the children are 
brought up by the parents ; the parents 
are not brought up by the children. 
Parental authority is still maintained. 
Home discipline continues to be the cor- 
ner-stone of public order. 

Norman Macleod was born at Campbell- 
town, which lies at the head of the lake 

which runs into the long 
Ibis Barls 5tite ^ r r^. ^ a 

promontory of Kmtyre. As 

the Highlands gave him his strong Celtic 
passion, so Campbelltown inspired him 
with sympathy for the sea and sailors. 
His temperament was quick, and a lively 
intellect he had from the start. 

He quickly caught the spirit of all out- 
ward things in nature or character, and 
his power of mimicry and sense of the 
ludicrous were developed very early. 
Once when only six years of age he was 
ill and had leeches applied to him. He 
named the leeches after the leading char- 
acters of the town, and scolded or praised 
them according as they did their work 
well or not, in the voice of the person 

imitated. 

114 



1Hi6 Earl^ Xite 



At twelve years of age he was sent to 
school in the Highlands, *'to be made a 
true Highlander of/' as his father said, 
and there he felt the glory of the hills, 
that remained upon his spirit through life. 
He retained the romance and poetic in- 
spiration of the Highland scenery, as who 
does not ? 

For lifting up one's thoughts and turn- 
ing up the corners of one's mouth there 
is nothing like mountain scenery. These 
carry one's mind away from groveling 
parsimony, and one's body from the ague, 
and take him through nature up to Nature's 
God. 

For the strength of the hills we bless thee, 

God, our father's God. 
Thou hast made thy people mighty 

By the touch of the mountain sod. 

He was a rollicksome, frolicsome boy, 
and his parents feared he would never 
be sedate enough to become a minister. 
His brother says: ''They wrote him very 
gravely on the dangerous tendencies be- 
trayed by his frolicsome disposition. . . 
115 



IKlotman fnlacleoD 



The noisy fun and ceaseless mimicry in 
which he indulged disturbed the very 
quiet of the Sabbath in his father's 
manse." 

On page thirty-six of his biography, 
we find a letter from his father saying : 
'^ You carry this nonsense much too far, 
and I beg of you, my dear Norman, to 
check it. Cease your buffoonery and 
distortions of countenance, which are not 
only offensive but grievous.'' 

One of the ''Queer Characters," such 
as one meets in Scotland, and one that 
was a great source of amusement to 
young Norman, was ''Old Bell" as he 
was called, author of Bell's Geography. 
He was a weaver of large intellect and 
considerable literary taste, and of an em- 
phasis and originality not unworthy of 
Dr. Johnson. He said of a man who was 
perpetually parading his perfect assurance 
of salvation, " I never saw a man so sure 
of going to heaven and so unwilling to go 
to it." When he was dying a young 
preacher undertook to pray with him, but 
he made such a fist at it that old Bell ex- 
ii6 



Tllnivereit^ Xtfe 



claimed: **My man, no doubt you mean 
well ; but you had better go home and 
learn to pray for yourself before you pray 
for other people." 

At the university Norman was more 
interested in general literature than in the 
classical studies, in which he 
never excelled. Instead of 
turning aside to make himself an expert in 
the dead languages he kept on the way of 
his natural disposition and cultivated his 
liking for the living languages of Shakes- 
peare and Wordsworth, who opened a 
new world to him. If he had attempted 
scholarship or set himself to make a stu- 
dent of himself, he would have failed. 

A fellow-student writes : *M verily be- 
lieve that Wordsworth did more for Nor- 
man, penetrated more deeply and vitally 
into him, than any other voice of inspired 
man. . . Norman was not much of a 
classical scholar. Homer and Virgil and 
the rest were not much to him. But I 
often thought that if he had known them 
ever so well in a scholarly way, they 

would never have so entered into his 
117 



IRorman fniacleoD 



secret being and become a part of his 
very self." 

He followed the fashion in going into 
ecstasies over Goethe and then — forget- 
ting all about him. Shakespeare, however, 
he never deserted ; he was too highly 
endowed himself with the dramatic pas- 
sion. He reveled in Falstaff and acted 
him admirably. 

When he came to study theology under 

Dr. Chalmers he felt at once and ever 

after the influence of that 

aTraL« powerful man. Here is char- 
acter molding character. It 
was one of those cases where the pupil 
is roused, stirred, plowed by the teacher. 
Excitation is often a greater mental force 
than information. 

He went to school at Weimar, Germany. 

It was almost violent transition from the 

Edinburgh Divinity Hall, and 

%ifc in Germans r^ /-u i j c ^ u 

Dr. Chalmers, and Scotch 

Presbyterianism, to Dr. Weissenborn, and 
the fashionable rationalistic life of the 
town that Thackeray so lovingly de- 
scribes. 

ii8 



%itc in (SctmnrvQ 



He was passionately fond of music, sang 
well to the guitar, danced as well as a 
Scotchman can be expected to dance, and 
became like Thackeray and all the young 
bloods, fascinated with the Baroness Me- 
lanie, the court beauty. 

But the Scotch stamina did not yield to 
the corrosive influence of the German 
atmosphere. Once a Scotchman always 
a Scotchman, once a Presbyterian always 
a Presbyterian ; and when you find a 
simon-pure born Scotchman, and a bred- 
in-the-bone Presbyterian in one and the 
same man or woman, you have the most 
indigestible file that the devil ever at- 
tempted to gnaw. 

There is no better stuff for making char- 
acter out of. It is one of those hard sub- 
stances that endure pounding and bear a 
polish at the same time. I have seen it in 
all its glory in Scotland and I was fasci- 
nated with it. Norman Macleod owed his 
safety amid the perils of fashionable life 
to the granite of his character, which he 
got from the granite of the Highlands and 

the granite of his religion. 
119 



IRorman nOacleoD 



He wrote to his mother the day after 
his twenty-second birthday: **A knowl- 
edge of the world either spoils a man, or 
makes him more perfect. I feel that it 
has done me good in a thousand ways. I 
have been made to look upon man as man.'' 
Here is one of the peculiarities that 
classify him. He belonged to that class 
of fishers of men who look upon man as 
fish to be caught by the net of the king- 
dom of God. He looked upon himself, 
the fisher, as very like the fish, of like 
passions and infirmities, not above them, 
but one of them, struggling up with them, 
tumbling back with them. One of the all 
kinds that are gathered by the net. 

His brother's death was a turning-point 
in the life of Norman Macleod. His affec- 
tion for his brother made his 
^^inhi6%^^^^^ heart mellow and susceptible 
to religious impressions. At 
that bed of death he prayed aloud in the 
presence of others for the first time ; from 
this incident he dated the commencement 
of earnest Christian life. Of this event 
he writes : 

I20 



B XTurnin^^point in bie Xite 

*'I think I may defy time to blot out all 
that occurred at that time. That warm 
room, the large bed with blue curtains, 
the tall thin boy with the pale face, and 
jet-black sparkling eyes and long curly 
hair ; the anxious mother, the silent steps. 
Then the loss of hope. The last scene. 
Oh, my brother ; my dear brother ; if thou 
seest me, thou knowest how I cherish thy 
memory. Yes, Jamie, I will never forget 
you. If I live to be an old man, you will 
be fresh and blooming in my memory." 
Here you have that ardent and profound 
sensibility which is a constituent element 
with joviality and good humor ; they go 
together. 

He was ordained and began to preach 
at the town of London, to a congregation 
made up of the most austere and the most 
lax in doctrine. Chartists and Tories and 
Covenanters, and all sorts politically, 
theologically, and socially. Partisan feel- 
ing ran high, so high as to create disturb- 
ance in the congregation, and the intruders 
had to be ejected by force. In his *' Jour- 
nal " he writes : 

121 



Ulorman fBlacleoD 



'* I had Lord Jeffrey in church. I never 
had a more fixed and attentive listener. 
Luckily I was thoroughly prepared.'' 

Young preachers soon learn, however, 
that they have nothing to fear from the 
bigwigs of their congregation. They know 
something of such difficulties from their 
own experience with the public. Those 
who are the best qualified for criticism 
are the least likely to display it. 

He read a sermon in a district where 
the reading of a sermon was regarded as 
a serious offense. After the sermon, one 
old lady asked another if she did not think 
that a grand sermon. 

'' Aye, but he read it.'' 

**Read it! I would not care if he 
whistled it." 

He was a glorious preacher and plat- 
form speaker. I have heard and felt him, 
as he poured out his heart and soul and 
intellect upon the people. He gave me 
his friendship, and I knew him also as a 
sympathetic pastor and admirable organ- 
izer. He could keep several irons in the 
fire without allowing any of them to burn. 

122 



IPreparlng bta Sermon6 



Speaking of sermon writing, he once 
said, *M never use a scrap of paper. I 
generally take eight hours 
to write a sermon. I never ^''^^^^^J^' 
begin to commit until Satur- 
day night. Four readings do it.'' 

He was a thoroughly human and imper- 
fect Christian, not an artificial one. He 
behaved like one. He did not study the 
part and act it. He did not adjust his 
attitudes, or arrange his countenance, or 
assume a phraseology, for the purpose of 
playing the character of a religious man 
or a minister. There was no '* Uriah 
Heep '' humility about him, or ^' Podsnap- 
pian'' familiarity with the ways of the 
Almighty. 

He says in one of his letters to a friend : 
**Oh, I hate cant! I detest it from my 
heart of hearts ! '' 

In another letter: **I saw a tomb in 
the chapel of Holyrood with this inscrip- 
tion, 'Here lies an honest man.' I only 
wish to live in such a way as to entitle 
me to have such an epitaph." And he 
did so live. 

123 



Hlorman ftlaclcoD 



But he kept a diary or religious log- 
book, which is not a healthful thing to do. 
You can put your pen to a better purpose. 
See that it does not make false entries in 
your account book, and let your guardian 
angel keep your log-book. 

One of the many ecclesiastical revolu- 
tions that have overtaken Protestantism 
since the one that created 

Ubc Disruption ., , , • i 

it, was what is known as the 
''Disruption'' in the Established Church 
of Scotland, in 1843, when four hundred 
and fifty ministers and elders and one 
hundred and fifty members marched out 
of the General Assembly and set up for 
themselves **The Free Church of Scot- 
land." 

Not to go into the controversy, which 
would take us too far from our main sub- 
ject, suffice it to say that the dispute was 
over the jurisdiction of the State in the 
affairs of the church ; or, in other words, 
over the spiritual independence of the 
church. 

The two parties into which the church 

was divided had divergent beliefs as to 
124 



Zbc BiBtuption 



the nature of the spiritual independence 
which of right belonged to the church, so 
there was a division among them and sub- 
divisions. There were Evangelicals, and 
Non-intrusionists, and Moderates — no im- 
moderates in name, although a large num- 
ber in behavior. 

The two main divisions were the Estab- 
lished Church and the Free Church of 
Scotland, the latter founding itself on the 
principle of total independence of the 
State. Dr. Macleod remained in the old 
church and, as we might infer from his 
large and many-sided make up, looked out 
in a large, sanguine, rational way upon 
the whole conflict. 

Writing to a friend he exclaimed, with 
his characteristic drollery: ''Would we 
had an Inquisition. One glorious martyr 
fire would finish the whole question. . . 
The divine authority being stamped upon 
every leading ecclesiastic, everything in 
the civilized world must be overthrown 
which stands in the way of his notions 
being realized. 

** There are ecclesiastics who look into 
125 



Hlorman fBlacleoD 



a glass and say, * I see every time I look 
there one who always agrees with me.' 
That is their whole world. Of the rest 
they are profoundly ignorant. 

** There are some men who, if left 
alone, are as cold as pokers, but like 
pokers, if they are once thrust into the 
fire, they become red hot, and add to 
the general blaze. Such are some min- 
isters when they get into church contro- 
versies.'' 

It is curious to notice the change in 
views that came over him with age and 
experience of the world. He says, '* As to 
spiritual independence, in spite of all the 
courts can do, there is not a thing in God's 
word which I have not as much freedom 
to obey in the church as out of it." 

He knew how to stay in a church with 
which he could not accord in every minute 
phase of opinion. He was not a schis- 
matic or an ism-atic. ''I thank God I 
was saved from the fearful excitement 
into which many of my friends were 
cast." 

While he took sides, or rather remained 
126 



XTbe Disruption 



on the side of the old church, without re- 
garding it as one of two sides, he was 
blind neither to her faults nor to the grand 
virtues of the seceders. He was not an 
irrational come-outer, neither was he an 
intolerant stay-iner. 

He says: '*As for church government I 
look upon it as a question of clothes — or 
rather of spectacles. What suits one eye 
will not suit another. What signifies 
whether a man reads with the spectacles 
of Episcopacy, Presbyterianism, or Con- 
gregationalism. 

'Ms it not a blessing that there is for 
one an old cathedral with stone knights 
and a bald-headed prelate, and for another 
a congregation that will listen to long meta- 
physical sermons, and that for another 
there is an Independent Church where he 
can fight the parson, and that in all they 
will hear what will make them wise unto 
salvation ? '' 

In a letter to a friend he writes, *M 

value each form of church government in 

proportion as it gains the end of making 

man more meet for heaven. ... At the 
127 



Hlorman fiOacleoD 



same time I cannot incur the responsibility 
of weakening the Established Church, that 
bulwark of Protestantism, that break- 
water against the waves of democracy 
and revolution, that ark of a nation's right- 
eousness.'' 

When he became chaplain to the queen 

he was not simply a formal hired chaplain 

to the royal household, he 

Tc^'Sln ^^s ^ sympathetic and faith- 
ful pastor to them. He said 
to them : '' I am here as a pastor, and as I 
wish you to thank me when we meet 
before God, so would I address you 
now." 

He wrote to his wife: '*I spoke fully 
and frankly to the prince, when we were 
alone — of his difficulties, temptations, and 
what the nation expected of him. How if 
he did God's will, good and able men 
would rally around him ; how if he became 
selfish, a selfish set of flatterers would 
truckle to him and ruin him, while caring 
only for themselves. 

**The prince spoke to me about preach- 
ing only twenty minutes. I told him I was 
128 



Zbc SunDa^ Controverei^ 



a Thomas a Becket and would resist the 
interference of the State, and that neither 
he nor any of the party had anything 
better to do than hear me. So I preached 
forty-seven minutes/' 

Thus you see he was no sycophant in 
the presence of royalty and I presume the 
queen liked him all the better for that. 
He was the confidential friend and ad- 
viser of the queen at the death of Prince 
Albert, and was admirably qualified by 
nature and religious manliness for the 
place. 

He writes : '' I am never tempted to con- 
ceal any conviction from the queen, for I 
feel she sympathizes with what is true 
and likes the speaker to utter the truth 
exactly as he believes it.'' 

Again we find him suddenly in perils 
among his own brethren, when he took 
issue with his Presbytery 
on the Sunday observance ^^^^^^ 
question. The Presbytery 
sent a pastoral letter to its churches, 
basing the observance of Sunday on the 

laws and regulations of the Old Testament 
I 129 



Horman flRacleoD 



respecting the observance of the Jewish 
Sabbath. 

He took the ground that the authority 
of the Jewish Sabbath was an insufficient, 
unscriptural, and therefore perilous basis, 
on which to rest the observance of the 
Christian Sunday. To use his own 
words: 'Mt was charged that I gave up 
the moral law, when I merely denied that 
the moral law and the ten commandments 
were identical, and asserted that the 
moral law as such was eternal. 

''That I did away with the Christian 
Sunday or Lord's Day when I denied that 
it rested as its divine ground on the per- 
petual obligation of the fourth command- 
ment, but endeavored to prove its superior 
glory and fitness on other grounds. 

''That I gave up the Decalogue as a 
rule of life, and therefore had no law to 
guide life, when I denied that we required 
to go to Moses for a rule, having Jesus 
Christ, and that the gospel was not a mere 
rule, but a principle, even life itself 
through faith in Christ. '* 

Dean Stanley says he heard a Scotch- 
130 



XLbc SunDai2 Controverais 



man from Glasgow say in the railway 
carriage : 

*'Dr. Macleod is getting a fine heckling 
about the Doxology/' 

I presume this man came as near to the 
point at issue as many a one of those 
who disputed over it. 

A conference was suggested to him and 
he replied, *' Conference ! And all be- 
cause I do not find the whole moral law 
in the ten commandments, or because I 
think the Decalogue a covenant with 
Israel, and as such not binding on us, and 
I base the Lord's Day on Christ and not 
on Moses, and find Christ's teaching a 
sufficient rule of life, without the Mosaic 
Covenant." 

These views were then quite common 
in all denominations and are far more 
common now. I read them in an editorial 
article of a leading denominational organ 
very recently. 

'*Yet,'' says his biographer, 'Mf Dr. 
Macleod had renounced Christianity itself, 
he could scarcely have produced a greater 
sensation.*' 

131 



Iftorman fHlacleoD 



His table was loaded with letters re- 
monstrating, abusing, denouncing, curs- 
ing. Ministers passed him without rec- 
ognition ; one of them hissed him on the 
street. 

Writing of this time he says : 'M felt so 
utterly cut off from every Christian 
brother, that had a chimney sweep given 
me his sooty hand, and smiled on me with 
his black face, I would have welcomed his 
salute and blessed him. 

**Men apologized for having been seen 
in my company. An eminent minister 
refused to preach in a certain pulpit be- 
cause I was to preach in it in the morning. 
Orators harangued against me in the City 
Hall. 

*'This was a terrible hurricane, but I 
had a stout heart, and, thank God, a con- 
science kept in perfect peace. 

** Never have I experienced so much 

real, deep sorrow, never so tasted the 

bitter cup of enmity, suspicion, injustice 

and hate of ministers and members of 

the church. 

'^Oh, it was awful. One would have 
132 



Zbc SunDa^ Gontroverai^ 



to read the newspapers I have collected 
to comprehend the fury of the attack. 
Men from pulpits and press seemed to 
gnash their teeth upon me. Injustice, in- 
tolerance, misrepresentation, sneakiness 
make me half-mad ; but the more need of 
silence, patience, and prayer/' 

His Presbytery admonished him and 
there the ecclesiastical part of the row 
came to an end, much to everybody's 
surprise, for the prisoner at the bar and 
everybody else expected to hear the storm 
howl in the General Assembly. Speak- 
ing after the manner of men, it was the 
merest chance whether the storm should 
go on or subside. Speaking after the 
manner of a Divine Providence the *• re- 
mainder of wrath was restrained.'' 

Dr. Macleod says he *'did not recant 
or withdraw one word, but admitted to 
the Presbytery that he had taught against 
the Confession of Faith. 

**I thus at the risk of my ecclesiastical 
life established the principle that all dif- 
ferences from the Confession did not in- 
volve deposition. 

^33 



Ulorman fnlacleoo 



'* In so far as the question of ministerial 
liberty was concerned, thank God, I have 
gained the day, and it is a bright day for 
Scotland, which will shine on unto the 
perfect day, which to me would be the 
subjection of every soul to the teaching 
of Jesus Christ, the one prophet of the 
church, and to Moses and the prophets as 
his servants, whose teaching is to be in- 
terpreted by that of the Master's." 

He told the Presbytery that it *' would 
be the last admonition they would address 
to a minister for preaching as he did, and 
he would show it to his son as an ecclesi- 
astical fossil. 

''Thank God, I am free. Never more 
shall I be trammeled by what partisan 
Christians think. 

''One master, Christ, and his word, 
shall alone guide me, and speak I will 
when duty calls, come what may.*' 

He said to me as we talked this battle 
over in his study, "If you ever take up 
the matter, you will see that justice is 
done me.'' 

Very loyally and with a full heart will I 
134 



Zbc SunDa)2 Conttx^verai^ 



now speak for him and claim the justice 
he asked, simply the truth with respect 
to his opinions, which are to-day ex- 
tensively received as in perfect accord 
with the teachings of him who alone has 
authority to teach the Christian religion. 

His triumph was crowned by his unani- 
mous election as moderator of the General 
Assembly in i86g. Instead of being driven 
from the church he was elevated to the 
highest position she had to confer. So the 
Philistines were subdued and came no 
more upon him there. 

In the midst of the battle he addressed 
some ringing verses to his friend, Princi- 
pal Tullock, who had made a stirring 
speech on his side. 

Brother, up to the breach 

For Christian freedom and truth, 
Let us act as we teach, 
With the wisdom of age and the vigor 
of youth, 
Heed not their cannon-balls. 
Ask not who stands or falls, 
Grasp the sword 
Of the Lord, 
And forward. 
135 



IKlorman fnlacleoD 



The day after his obnoxious speech on 
the Sunday observance question, he was 

told this story : 
^Tmtt^Z' A very rigid Scotch clergy- 

man had a very decent shoe- 
maker for an elder who taught a favorite 
starling some old Scottish tunes. One 
Sunday morning the minister as he was 
passing heard the bird whistle '*Over the 
Water to Charlie/' and was so shocked 
that he told the elder he must wring the 
bird's neck or resign his office. The elder 
gave up his office and kept his starling 
and prospered. 

The object of the story, he says, was to 
show the onesidedness and consequent 
untruth of hard logical principle when in 
conflict with genuine moral feeling. This 
story gave great offense to the intolerant 
portion of the Scotch Church. 

He was fond of his home and a com- 
panion to his children. The keynote of 

his training and discipline 

3Fon& of Dome , . . , . 

was loving companionship. 

He got down on the floor with them, 

took part in their play, invented all sorts 
136 



XLbc Ipbilt6tine0 again 



of games for them, told them stories, 
wrote songs for them, narrated his ad- 
ventures to them, kept up a perpetual 
undercurrent of moral and religious teach- 
ing, and impressed lessons of kindness, 
generosity, bravery, and truth. 

His brother says of him : '' The slightest 
appearance of selfishness or want of truth 
was severely dealt with, but when the re- 
buke was given there was an end of it, and 
he took pains to make the culprit feel that 
confidence was completely restored." 

When he came home jaded and wounded 
from the battle he rested his great nature 
with an uproarious frolic with his children, 
who were always ready to impart of their 
superabundance of life to the wearied 
father or mother. What a power, what a 
galvanic battery a child is, to be sure. 

He became the editor of the magazine 
called '^Good Words," and in conse- 
quence the Philistines were 
upon him again, this time '^^' IJ^^f ^"'' 
reinforced by the Pharisees. 
It was denounced by the leaders and 
organs of the Evangelical party in the 
137 



IWotman fnlacleoD 



English Church, as though it had been 
edited by his satanic majesty himself. 
The word evangelical does not mean there 
what it means here. Here it refers to 
doctrines, whoever may hold them, there 
to one of the three parties — Ritualistic, Ra- 
tionalistic, and Evangelical, or High, Broad, 
and Low ; and the bitterest of these is the 
Low or Evangelical — bitterest toward the 
other two parties, bitterest toward the 
Nonconformists. 

'' Good Words '' was banned and 
damned with all the authoritative ferocity 
with which the pope banishes heretical 
books to the Index Expurgatorius. The 
Free Church Assembly was overtured by 
one of the Presbyteries to look after this 
magazine. Here is a specimen attack : 

" It was charged that a professor had 
publicly declared that he had read an ar- 
ticle on astronomy in * Good Words ' on 
Sunday evening.'' 

Dr. Macleod replied : '* Why not take 
the magazine by the throat at 11.55 on 
Saturday night and incarcerate it till 12.05 
Monday morning ? " 
138 



XLbc iPbtltetinee B^ain 



*' I was threatened that unless I gave 
up Stanley and Kingsley, I should be 
crushed/' Dean Stanley and Charles 
Kingsley ! 

And this passage was quoted against 
the unholy alliance, '* Thou shalt not 
plough with an ox and an ass together/' 
But perhaps the kicking came of the fact 
that certain asses were not asked to help 
at the plowing. 

The attack increased the sale of the 
magazine and the editor's determination 
to stand by it. He said : **The opposi- 
tion gives frightful evidence of the low 
state to which pharisaical religion has 
come. I shall go on as I have begun, 
with a firm, clear purpose and a peaceful, 
courageous heart." 

He said to the publisher : *' Let us do 
what is right, and dare the devil, whether 
he comes as an infidel or a Pharisee." 

So again the Lord delivered him out of 
the hands of the Philistines, and the rest 
of his days were days of prosperity and 
peace. 

Nothing could better illustrate the differ- 
139 



lUorman fBlacleoD 



ence between the atmosphere of this 
country and that of England than this 
preposterous opposition to this admirable 
magazine. It would not have happened 
in this country. There may be bigotry 
enough here, but it has no such party or- 
ganization or narrow partisan motive. The 
intolerant in all denominations are re- 
strained by the tolerant public opinion of 
the denomination to which they belong. 

His sense of the ludicrous was of great 
use to him, as it is to any man who pos- 
sesses it. It broke the force 

'^^'ibZlV^ of many an attack. It acted 
as a buffer to the buffetings 
he was obliged to take from ignorance and 
bigotry. Hence the elasticity with which 
he met one of the most irrational and 
acrid gales of opposition that ever beat 
upon a brave and noble soul. No storms 
could sour his milk of human kindness. 

He was easily touched by such a story 
as this : '* The grave-digger of Kilwinning 
parish was dying, and was questioned by 
his minister as to the cause of his sadness. 
The old grave-digger replied : ' Well, you 
140 



1Hl6 Sense of IHumor 



see I was just thinking that I had buried 
fifty folk this year and I was hoping I 
might be spared to make out the hundred 
before the next new year.' " 

He told me that once when an alarm of 
fire was raised in a great audience over 
which he was presiding he fell into a vio- 
lent fit of laughter ; and the people were 
quieted. 

He was one of a club of literary satir- 
ists, the chief merit of whose productions 
was their absurdity. A toast having 
been proposed to poetry in rather dispar- 
aging terms, a poet responded in these 
words : ** I will tell the gentlemen what 
poetry is. Poetry is the language of the 
tempest when it roars through the crash- 
ing forest. Poetry, sir, poetry was the 
voice which the Almighty thundered 
through the peaks of Sinai, and I myself, 
sir, have published five volumes of poetry, 
and the last, in its third edition, can be had 
for the price of five shillings and six- 
pence.'' 

His jolly-heartedness enabled him to 
endure without discouragement and even 
141 



Klorman fiOacleoD 



to profit by the somewhat caustic criticism 
of the great organs of culture. 

He wrote : **1 am pretty well convinced 
from the reviews of ' Old Lieutenant ' that 
I am not able to be of use in that line. 
The book is killed and buried forever, 
though self-love makes me think it cannot 
be so bad as they make it. I shall get 
what good I can out of the reviews." 

Being so endowed with the sense of 

humor, we are not surprised to find that a 

corresponding sense of the 

^B^mor^ pathetic went with it. He 
could sound the highest note 
of hilarious enjoyment and the lowest of 
pensive depression. These two experi- 
ences are inseparable and unavoidable. 
This is human nature. I have quoted 
from his sympathetic experiences at the 
time of the death of his brother. He 
abounded in sympathy and gentleness 
and humane pity. 

Furthermore, Dr. Macleod was an illus- 
tration of the equally well-established fact 
that such natures combine the keenest 
relish for the grotesque with the liveliest 
142 



Ipatbo0 anD IHumot 



feeling of reverence. Some of the most 
reverent and spiritual men have been men 
of overflowing humor and fun. Dr. Mac- 
leod was a man of this sort. Conse- 
quently I am surprised that his biographer 
should express surprise at this. 

He says : ** Those who knew him only 
in society, buoyant and witty, overflow- 
ing with animal spirits, the very soul of 
laughter and enjoyment, may feel sur- 
prised at the almost morbid self-condemna- 
tion and excessive tenderness of conscience 
which his journals display, still more at the 
tone of sadness which so frequently per- 
vades them. This tone of sadness must 
sound strange from one generally so buoy- 
ant/' 

This statement sounds strange, for if 
there is any fact respecting human nature 
or mental philosophy well established, it 
is that sadness is a constituent element of 
the buoyant natureo 

Notice what he writes concerning his 
degree of D. D. received from Glasgow 
University : 

''The University of Glasgow has this 
143 



Hlorman fiOacleoD 



day conferred upon me the degree of 
D. D. How sad it makes me ! I feel as 
if it had stamped me with old age, and 
that it was a great cataract in the stream, 
leading more rapidly to the unfathomable 
gulf where all is still. . . It needs all my 
faith to prevent my becoming peevish and 
miserable with myself.'' 

He wrote: ''Some will tell you that 
you deny the atonement unless you be- 
lieve that Christ on the 
^^L^tiTnfe^^ cross endured the punish- 
ment which was due to each 
sinner of the elect for whom he died, 
which thank God, I do not believe, as I 
know he died for the whole world.'' 

*'It is not enough to believe that sin is 
a curse, and that so long as a sinner re- 
mains in this world, or anywhere else, 
loving sin, he is in hell. You must be- 
lieve in literal fire and brimstone, or you 
are not evangelical." 

This reminds us of Finney : 

'Mf Christ did not die for all men, how 
can it be said that God willeth all men to 
be saved ? Or, how can all men be com- 
144 



1H10 ^beolo^lcal Sentiments 

manded to believe ? What are they to 
believe ? If it is said God knows that 
they will not come, this is charging God 
with conduct man would be ashamed of. 
If they may, but will not believe, this is 
moral guilt, not natural inability. . . A 
man must have hell taken out of himself 
before he can be said to be out of hell. . . 
Believing too much is more philosophical 
than believing nothing at all.'' 

With a large experience of the one-man 
form of worship he preferred a more con- 
genial form. 

He said: *'Our better-thinking clergy 
are beginning to see the use of a set form 
of worship. . . And who can look at the 
critical, self-sufficient faces of the one- 
half of our congregations during prayers, 
and the pufifmg and blowing of the minis- 
ter, and not deplore the absence of some 
set prayers which would keep the feelings 
of many right-thinking Christians from 
being hurt every Sunday." 

Again he said: ''Neither money nor 
schools nor tracts can be substituted for 
living men. We want Christians, whether 

K 145 



IWorman fniacleoD 



they be blacksmiths or shoemakers or law- 
yers, to remember their own responsibili- 
ties, and to be personal min- 
isters for good. 

This is what he was, a living man, a 
personal minister for good, a mighty man 
of valor, a splendid leader and captain in 
the camp of the King of saints, the Lord 
our Christ. 

He died at the right time, in the right 
place, and in the right way. He died 
suddenly, which was his 
Wish, and m the midst of his 
family, and at a time when his work 
seemed to be done and well done. He 
had fought a good fight ; he had kept the 
faith. 

He had won all the battles that had 
been given him to fight ; his enemies were 
silenced. He had accomplished, or set in 
motion so that others could carry on, 
great and far-reaching measures for the 
enlightenment of the world, the rescue of 
the perishing, and the advancement of the 
church. 

To be sure he was not very old, only 
146 



'Hie Beatb 



sixty, but old age is always within sight 
and near at hand to one of his tempera- 
ment at that age. Some may hold their 
own after that for a time, but such are 
few. With the most of men of so rapid 
and intense a life the natural force is 
greatly abated at that age, and a quiet 
death is to be preferred to a dependent 
life. Happy the man who dies when his 
work is done. 

While reclining on the sofa in great 
feebleness, he said : *'A11 is perfect peace 
and perfect calm.'' 

*M have glimpses of heaven that no 
pen or tongue or words can describe." 

It was Sunday, and the bells had just 
ceased to ring, when his head fell back. 
There was a gentle sigh, and the great, 
brave heart of Norman Macleod ceased to 
beat for this world and began to beat for 
the other. 

He slept with his fathers, and was bur- 
ied with his fathers amid the glorious hills 
of his native land. 

Such an ending of such a life is no 
place for discouragement and repining. 
147 



Vlorman fulacleoD 



It is for reconsecrating ourselves to the 
Master whom he served so faithfully and 
whom we profess to serve. It is a place 
for that courage which he illustrated so 
admirably, and which rings in the verses 
he composed. 

Courage, brother, do not stumble. 

Though thy path be dark as night 
There is a star to guide the humble. 

Trust in God and do the right. 
Though the road be long and dreary, 

And the end be out of sight ; 
Foot it bravely, strong or weary. 

Trust in God, and do the right. 

Perish policy and cunning, 

Perish all that fears the light, 
Whether losing, whether winning, 

Trust in God and do the right. 
Some will hate thee, some will love thee 

Some will flatter, some will slight : 
Cease from man, and look above thee, 

Trust in God and do the right. 



148 



CHARLES G. FINNEY 



IV 



CHARLES G. FINNEY was one of the 
most striking and unique religious 
forces of our times, the most 
remarl<abie revivalist this ^*T,n<!"*''* 

IPulptt 

country has produced. 

We shall study him from a human point 
of view and take for granted all that can 
be said of him from a divine point of view. 
We shall follow in the main his autobiog- 
raphy, a noteworthy book and worth your 
reading. 

He was born in Warren, Conn., in 1792, 
and died in 1875, ^t eighty-three years of 
age. He enjoyed the privi- 
leges of a common school ^'^'^tTct''^^^ 
until he was fifteen years of 
age, and became a school-teacher himself. 
Here is another of the powerful men who 
may be said to be the growth of our com- 
mon school system. 

He thought of going to Yale College, 
151 



Cbarlee ©♦ jfinne^ 



but his preceptor, who was a graduate of 
Yale, dissuaded him, saying it would be a 
loss of time, as he could accomplish the 
curriculum in two years instead of four, 
as required by the college. He says, '* I 
acquired some knowledge of Latin, Greek, 
and Hebrew, but I was never a classical 
scholar/' But he was a scholar in the 
English language. He was an educated 
man in the best sense of the phrase, well 
furnished for the work for which he was 
adapted. The end of all education is to 
know what to do, and how to do it. He 
knew how to make the most of himself. 

He selected the law as his profession, 
but was soon converted and left it for the 
ministry. This was at twenty-six years 
of age. 

His experience at conversion is a revela- 
tion of the man ; his temperament, his 
emotional nature, his depth of sensibility. 
*' The rising of my soul was so great that 
I rushed into the back room of the law 
office to pray, when it seemed as if I met 
the Lord Jesus face to face. It did not 
occur to me then," — this is a character- 
152 



B IRevivaliet wftb ITntellect 



istic description, — '* nor for some time 
afterward, that this was wholly a mental 
state. On the contrary, it seemed to me 
that 1 saw him as I would see any other 
man. I wept aloud like a child. It 
seemed to me that I bathed his feet with 
my tears. I literally bellowed out the 
unutterable gushings of my heart." An 
elder of the church came in and asked 
him how he felt, and when he learned, 
the elder fell into a spasmodic fit of laugh- 
ter. This illustrates the great diversity 
and contrariety of forms in religious ex- 
perience ; what is one man's meat is 
another man's — laughing-stock. 

We see that he was a man of great re- 
ligious sensibility, of an unusual emotional 
development, with a tendency to take ac- 
count and make account of his emotional 
experiences. In the course of his auto- 
biography, we are told of the ineffable 
light that shone into his soul, almost pros- 
trating him to the ground. 

'* The Lord drew so near to me while I 
was engaged in prayer, that my flesh liter- 
ally trembled on my bones. It seemed 
153 



Cbatlee ©♦ JFtnnei^ 



more like being on the top of Sinai, amidst 
its thunderings, than in the presence of 
the cross of Christ/' 

Here you have a foretaste of remark- 
able expression, language, utterance, and 
rhetoric, the power of figurative expres- 
sion which has distinguished all great 
preachers, and without which there can 
be no effective preaching. 

He resolved to prepare for the ministry. 
Deacon B. came into the office and said 
to him : 

*'Mr. Finney, do you recollect that my 
cause is to be tried at ten o'clock this 
morning ? I suppose you are ready.'' 

Finney replied: '^Deacon, I have a re- 
tainer from the Lord Jesus to plead his 
cause and I cannot plead yours." 

The deacon looked at him in astonish- 
ment and asked : '' What do you mean ? " 

Finney replied that he had enlisted in 
the cause of Christ, and that he had a 
retainer from the Lord Jesus to plead his 
cause. Some lawyers behave as though 
they had a retainer from a very different 
person. 

154 



B Klcvivallst witb Untellect 



Some graduates of Princeton Theologi- 
cal Seminary tried to persuade him to 
study there, but he refused, saying he 
would not put himself under such influ- 
ence as they had been under. They had 
been wrongly educated, and did not meet 
his ideal of what a minister of Christ 
should be. 

He commenced his studies under his 
pastor, and began then and there to apply 
his splendid logical faculty and controver- 
sial acuteness to the prevailing form of doc- 
trinal preaching, which was freezing the 
water of everlasting life, so that however 
free and refreshing it may be as it bursts 
from its fountain on the New Testament 
page, it becomes as it flows from the lips 
of the preacher — an icicle. Finney's pas- 
tor and teacher was one of this school of 
theologians and preachers, and Finney was 
not. So the young man set about knock- 
ing the nonsense out of the old man's 
head. 

His teacher held that the human con- 
stitution was morally depraved, that men 
were utterly unable to comply with the 
155 



Cbarles ©♦ Jffnne^ 



terms of the gospel, to repent or to believe, 
or to do anything that God required them 
to do ; that while they were free to do all 
evil, in the sense of being able to commit 
any amount of sin, yet they were not free 
to perform any good ; that God condemned 
them for their sinful nature, and for this as 
well as for their transgressions they de- 
served eternal death. 

He told his pastor he took it for granted 
that his hearers were theologians, and that 
he assumed many things which needed to 
be proved. This did not suit Finney and 
he said so. It may not suit some who do 
not say so. 

You see then the cast and make of this 
man's mind ; it required proof, evidence, 
clearness, candor, honesty, in the preacher 
as well as the politician. 

Finney repudiated and combatted at 
once these doctrines, to the great dismay 
of his teacher, who '* warned him that if 
he would persist in reasoning on these 
subjects instead of receiving them, he 
would land in infidelity.'' 

At his examination by the presbytery 
156 



%iccnect> 



he was asked if he received the Confes- 
sion of Faith. He says : 

*' I had not examined it, 
that is, the large work containing the 
catechism and confession. This had made 
no part of my study. I replied that I re- 
ceived it for substance of doctrine, so far 
as I understood it. But I spoke in a way 
that plainly implied, I think, that 1 did not 
pretend to know much about it. When I 
came to read the Confession of Faith and 
ponder it, I saw that although I could re- 
ceive it, as I know multitudes do, as con- 
taining the substance of Christian doc- 
trine, yet there were several points upon 
which I could not put the same construc- 
tion that was put on them at Princeton ; 
and I accordingly, everywhere, gave the 
people to understand that I did not accept 
that construction ; or if that was the true 
construction, then I entirely differed from 
the Confession of Faith.'' 

He was struck with the fact that the 

prayers he heard at prayer meetings were 

not answered, and that those who offered 

them did not regard them as answered ; 

157 



CMtlce ©♦ jffnne^ 



they had not the faith to expect God to 
give them what they asked for. He says 
again : 

*' On one occasion, when I was in one 
of the prayer meetings, I was asked if I 
did not desire that they should pray for 
me. I told them no ; because I did not 
see that God answered their prayers. I 
said : ' I suppose I need to be prayed for, I 
am conscious that I am a sinner ; but I do 
not see that it will do any good for you to 
pray for me, for you are continually ask- 
ing, but you do not receive. You have 
been praying for the Holy Spirit to de- 
scend upon yourselves, and yet complain- 
ing of your leanness. You have prayed 
enough since I have attended these meet- 
ings to have prayed the devil out of 
Adams, if there is any virtue in your 
prayers. But here you are praying on, 
and complaining still.' '' 

There is a great deal of complaining 
that tries to pass for pray- 

ipra^inganD jng. Some of US act as 

Complaining j^, . ■, 

though we were command- 
ed to complain without ceasing. 
158 



B Xaw of IRbetoric 



We find him beginning to preach, and 
we find that he began as he continued and 
ended, a lawyer, resolved to have a ver- 
dict on the spot or know the reason why. 

He exclaims : *' I talked to the people 
as I would have talked to a jury. Of all 
the causes that were ever plead, the cause 
of religion, I thought, had the fewest able 
advocates, and that if advocates at the 
bar should pursue the same course in 
pleading the cause of their clients that 
ministers do in pleading the cause of 
Christ with sinners, they would not gain 
a single case.'' 

His fellow-ministers complained not only 
of what he preached but of how he 
preached it. Of them he 
writes: *M used to meet '^^^^il 
from ministers a great many 
rebuffs and reproofs in respect to my 
manner of preaching." They reproved 
him for illustrating his ideas by reference 
to the common affairs of men of different 
occupations. 

They would say: ''Why do you not 
illustrate from events of ancient history, 
159 



CMtlce (5. 3finnei2 



and take a more dignified way of illustra- 
ting your ideas ? " 

To this he replied : 'Mf my illustrations 
were new and striking they would occupy 
the minds of the hearers instead of the 
truth which I wished to illustrate/' 

He began by being ornate, but became 
direct and simple in style. When he 
came to preach the gospel he says he was 
so anxious to be thoroughly understood 
that he ** studied on the one hand to avoid 
what was vulgar, and on the other to ex- 
press my thoughts with the greatest sim- 
plicity of language." 

He took a commission from a ladies' 
missionary society, and this mighty man 
of God began his preaching at Evans 
Mills, New York State. The people 
thronged the place and extolled his preach- 
ing. But so far from being pleased and 
inflated by their flattery, he was offended 
by it and resented it. He rolled it as a 
sweet morsel under his — feet. 

What he wanted was a verdict for his 
client. He told them that something was 
wrong in him or in them, that the kind 



1 60 



21 Xaw of IRbetorlc 



of interest they manifested in his preach- 
ing was doing them no good, and that he 
could not spend his time with them unless 
they were going to receive the gospel. 

He requested those who were willing 
to make their peace with God to rise up, 
and those who were unwilling to sit still. 
They looked at one another and all sat 
still, as he had expected. They began 
to look angry and arose and started for 
the door. He paused, and they paused, 
and he said he was sorry for them and 
would preach to them once more the next 
night. 

They all left the house, except a deacon, 
who came up to him and said : 

*' Brother Finney, you have got them. 
They cannot rest under this, rely upon it. 
The brethren are all discouraged, but I 
am not. I believe you have done the very 
thing that needed to be done, and that we 
shall see the results.'' 

The deacon and Mr. Finney went into 
the grove together and spent the afternoon 
in prayer, while the people were threaten- 
ing to give the revivalist a coat of tar and 
L i6i 



CbarlcB ©♦ JFinne^ 



feathers and ride him on a rail. The 
evening came, and with it a crowd far 
greater than could get into the school- 
house. He says: '*For more than an 
hour the word of God came through me 
to them in a manner that I could see was 
carrying all before it. Many of them 
could not hold up their heads." This was 
the beginning of the physical or mental 
effects of his preaching. A woman fell 
down speechless, and was carried from 
the house in a kind of trance. A man 
who had sworn that he would kill Finney 
and had brought a pistol to the meeting 
fell from his seat and shrieked that he 
was sinking to hell. He was soon deliv- 
ered and in ecstasy. Men of the strong- 
est nerves were so cut down that they 
had to be carried home by their friends. 
This he should not have allowed. The 
fact that Moody has nothing of this proves 
that there need be nothing of it. 

He could control the physical excite- 
ment as well as arouse it. He was mighty 
in command. On one occasion when he 
saw that there was danger of an uproar, 
162 



Ti nrian witb a TKIlill of bia ®wn 

he says he told the people to kneel down 
and to keep so quiet that they could hear 
every word of his prayer. They did so 
and the excitement subsided. His prayer 
was adroitly fashioned for the occasion. 

His will power was tremendous and is 
worthy of study from the point of view 
of mental philosophy, as well as from 
that of practical preaching. Bear in mind 
that we are looking at him from the human 
side, and take for granted all that can be 
said and all that he says on the divine or 
supernatural side. 

We observe the exercise of this will 
power upon himself, for he commanded 
himself as well as other people. 

He was one of those men who never 
say die or even cry sick, and who defy 
the doctors to prove that 
they are going to die. The ^at.Va'l'n 
physicians told him that he 
had the consumption — and he had. They 
told him that he would never labor any 
more in revivals, but he labored a whole 
lifetime in revivals after that. They told 
him that he could live but a little while, 
163 



Cbarlee ©♦ afinnei^ 



but he lived about fifty years after they 
said so. He told the doctors of bodies just 
what he told the doctors of souls, that they 
were mistaken ; and they were. 

He coughed blood when he was licensed, 
and his friends thought he could live but 
a short time. He was charged not to 
preach more than once a week and not 
more than half an hour at a time ; all of 
which he proceeded not to do. 

He plunged head-foremost and heart- 
foremost into a preaching campaign of six 
months' duration. 

He says : *' I preached out of doors. I 
preached in barns. I preached in school- 
houses. I preached nearly every night. 
I preached about two hours at a time. 
Before the six months were completed my 
health was entirely restored, my lungs 
were sound, and a glorious revival spread 
all over that region of country." 

If you spend all your time in nursing 
yourself, you will never be anything but 
a nurse. Vanity is at the bottom of our 
coddling ourselves. We pretend that we 
are saving ourselves for the Lord's work, 
164 



We ipreacbing an Baaault upon tbe TWlill 

when we would save ourselves much 
more successfully if we would do as Fin- 
ney did, throw ourselves into that work. 
But suppose you die ? Die then. ''He 
that saveth his life shall lose it, and he 
that loseth his life for my sake, shall find 
it." This Finney pluck and will is the 
stuff to make preachers out of, or any 
other man out of, who has to earn his 
bread by as much sweat of the brow as 
is distilled out of him by this climate. 

It is curious and instructive to note that 
Finney being a man of great will-power 
himself, appealed perpetually 
to that power in his hearers. iHts iprcacbfng 

,, 11 J ^1 ^ an Bssault xapon 

He compelled them to come tbeiimiu 
in and to give in. It was a 
conflict of wills in this conflict between 
preacher and hearer, and there were few 
wills that could stand against one so self- 
reliant and aggressive as that of Charles 
G. Finney. 

Here is his keynote idea : the command 
to obey implies the ability to obey him ; 
a man's *' cannot" is his will-not, and his 
*'will " is his can. 

165 



Cbatles ©♦ Jfinnc^ 



He says: '*I assumed that moral de 
pravity is and must be a voluntary atti- 
tude of the mind, that it does and must 
consist in the committal of the will to the 
gratification of the desires. 

''One doctor of divinity told me that 
he felt a great deal more like weeping 
over sinners than blaming them. 

*' I replied that I did not wonder, if he 
believed that they had a sinful nature, 
and that sin was entailed upon them and 
they could not help it.'' 

He declared that it was putting a stum- 
blingblock in the way of the church and 
the world to teach, *'A nature sinful in 
itself, a total inability to obey God, and 
condemnation to eternal death for the sin 
of Adam. When men asked God to for- 
give them, they were to commit them- 
selves unalterably to his will." 

'* Nothing was in the way of their offer- 
ing acceptable prayer but their own obsti- 
nacy." 

'Mt was plain," he says of one place, 

*'that nothing could be done unless the 

pastor's views could be changed." So 
i66 



Bn ©ID Scbool tniniater 



with the pastor in the pulpit behind him 
and the congregation before him, Finney 
opened his battery on front 
and rear. He says he '' en- »" ®i^ scbooi 
deavored to show that if 
man was as helpless as their views repre- 
sented him to be, he was not to blame for 
his sins. If he had lost in Adam all 
power of obedience, so that obedience 
had become impossible to him, it was 
mere nonsense to say that he could be 
blamed for what he could not help. 

''Some looked distressed, others of- 
fended ; some laughed, some wept, and 
the pastor moved himself from one end of 
the sofa to the other, in the pulpit behind 
me, breathing and sighing audibly. When 
I was through I did not invite the pastor to 
pray, for I dared not, but prayed myself 
that the Lord would set home the word.'' 

Wary man ! He was quite right, and 
quite like a lawyer who does not propose 
to allow his opponent the last word with 
judge or jury if he can help it. 

As they were passing out, a lady said 
to her pastor: *Mf that sermon be the 
167 



Cbarlee 6» jfinnei^ 



truth, you have never preached the gos- 
pel ; '' and the pastor replied, **I am 
sorry to say I never have." 

Once in England he listened to a ser- 
mon in which repentance was represented 
not as a voluntary, but as 
iRcpentance not a an involuntary change, and 

Bo^ma but a ... ^ ^ , r 

con&uct consistmg or a mere state of 
sensibility, and the impeni- 
tent were told to go home and pray for 
repentance. Finney says he ''found it 
difficult to keep from screaming to the 
people to repent, and not to think they 
were doing their duty in merely praying 
for repentance." 

It seems to me that John the Baptist 
would have felt the same impulse and in 
all probability would have acted upon it. 

Here again he was logical. He held 

that the religion of the New Testament is 

a total abstinence from anything and 

anybody that simply amuses or pleases, 

and that every word of instruction to the 

first twelve Christians is binding upon 

every one of the present twelve millions, 

more or less, of Christians. 
i68 



IRepentance not a Bo^ma but a Conduct 

Your only escape from that logic is just 
one other, and the only other logic : the 
rules for the government of the individual 
are left to the inward light of that indi- 
vidual, whether it be for croquet, cards, 
dancing, or the preaching of women. 

A man of strong will, high character, 
and prominent position, rebelled against 
the favorite idea of Finney, that *'the 
sinner's cannot is his will not/' This 

Mr. H insisted that this was false in 

his case, that he was willing to be a 
Christian. 

'*I did not spare him,'' says Mr. Fin- 
ney, *' but from day to day I hunted him 
from his refuges, and answered all his ob- 
jections and met all his excuses." 

The man was driven to prayer, and 
commenced with the Lord's Prayer, but 
when he came to *'Thy will be done," 
he was brought face to face with the will 
of God, and found that what Finney had 
told him was true ; he was not willing 
that God's will should be done. He gath- 
ered up all his strength of will and cried 

aloud, ''Thy will be done on earth as it 
169 



QMtlce ©♦ jffnneis 



is in heaven/' and was ''perfectly con- 
scious that his will went with the words." 

On one occasion after the choir had 
executed an anthem so scientifically that 
not a word was distinguishable, Mr. Fin- 
ney prayed: ''Lord, we trust thou hast 
understood the song that thy servants 
have tried to sing. Thou knowest that 
we could not understand a word of it.'' 

It was in a "burnt district," or a sec- 
tion where there had been an extravagant 
religious excitement, with 
,pfa.!;"meeTn« ^^e usual mischievous reac- 
tion. 

" I found that it had left among Chris- 
tian people some practices that were of- 
fensive, and calculated rather to excite 
ridicule than any serious conviction of the 
truth of religion. For example, in all 
their prayer meetings I found a custom 
prevailing like this : every professor of 
religion felt it a duty to testify for Christ. 
They must take up the cross and say 
something in meeting. One would rise 
and say in substance : ' I have a duty to 
perform which no one can perform for 
170 



B WumDrum prater flUeetin^ 

me. I arise to testify that religion is 
good ; though I must confess that I do not 
enjoy it at present. I have nothing in par- 
ticular to say, only to bear my testimony ; 
and I hope you will all pray for me.' 
This concluded, that person would sit 
down and another would rise and say, 
' Religion is good ; I do not enjoy it ; I 
have nothing else to say, but I must do 
my duty. I hope you will all pray for 
me.' Of course the ungodly would make 
sport of this ; it was in fact ridiculous and 
repulsive.'' 

To counteract the effect of this he sub- 
stituted preaching services interspersed 
with prayers. He would talk awhile, and 
call upon some sensible brother to pray 
awhile, and then he would resume his dis- 
course. 

He was abundant in explicit and per- 
sistent prayer. He writes, at one time : 
'* I saw no means of providing for my 
family through the winter. Thanksgiv- 
ing Day came, and found us so poor that I 
had been obliged to sell my traveling 
trunk, which I had used in my evangel- 
171 



Cbatle0 6» jfinneis 



istic labors, to supply the place of a cow 
which I had lost. I rose on the morning 
of Thanksgiving, and spread our necessi- 
ties before the Lord. I finally concluded 
by saying that if help did not come, I 
should assume that it was best that it 
should not, and would be entirely satis- 
fied with any course that the Lord would 
see it wise to take." 

He returned home after preaching, to 
find a check for two hundred dollars from 
Mr. Josiah Chapin, of Providence, who 
continued to send him six hundred a year 
for several years, and on this he managed 
to live. 

Rich men should answer the prayers of 
poor men, especially if the poor man 
should happen to be a preacher. It is 
strange that it does not occur to rich 
Christians that if they are unable to 
preach or teach themselves they can pay 
the salaries of those who are trying to 
preach in spite of the poverty that breaks 
their hearts, ruins their health, and short- 
ens their lives. Rich Christians can 

endow chairs of Christian usefulness. 
172 



1Kt6 metbo^ wltb Sfteptice 



He was wont to say: *Mf a right 
course is taken with skeptics, they can 
be shut up to condemnation 
by their own irresistible con- ^^' f^SJ"^^^ 
victions, and they will rejoice 
to find a door of mercy opened to them." 

Here is his method with an inquiring 
theist. The man said, in reply to a ques- 
tion, that he believed in the existence of 
God, and that he ought to worship and 
obey him but did not. 

**Well, then,'' exclaimed Mr. Finney, 
''why should I give you further informa- 
tion and further light, if you will not do 
your duty and obey the light you already 
have } When you will make up your mind 
to live up to your convictions, to obey God 
according to the best light you have ; 
when you will make up your mind to 
repent of your neglect thus far, and to 
please God just as well as you know how, 
the rest of your life, I will try to show 
you that the Bible is from God. Until 
then it is of no use to do any such thing." 

The man admitted that that was fair, 
went away, did as he was directed, and 
173 



Cbarlee ©♦ Jfinnei^ 



became a Christian, a trustee of Oberlin, 
and an influential and generous man. 

While there was a general uniformity 

in the method of his preaching, he was as 

flexible as adroit in preach- 

^^soui™^" ing for special cases. A good 
woman and devoted Chris- 
tian got into a despairing frame of mind, 
and yet was expressing her concern for 
an impenitent young man who violently op- 
posed the revival. Mr. Finney said to her : 

** Aunt Lucy, when you and B. die God 
will have to make a partition in hell and 
give you a room by yourself.'' 

''Oh, Mr. Finney!'' 

*' Yes," replied Mr. Finney. '* Here he 
is raving against God, and here you are 
almost insane to see him in this condition. 
Can two persons in two such opposite 
frames of mind, do you think, be sent to 
the same place ? " 

Her features relaxed, and she smiled for 
the first time in many days. Finally she 
laughed and said, ''We cannot." Her 
despair cleared up and she was as happy 
as a young convert. 

174 



miee to Wiin Soule 



He was good at getting people out of 
the theological dilemmas in which they 
had become involved by an erroneous 
education. A thoughtful man told him 
that he could not receive the Bible because 
it teaches that ''God has imputed Adam's 
sin to all his posterity, that we inherit the 
guilt of that sin by nature, and are ex- 
posed to eternal damnation for the guilt of 
Adam's sin.'' 

Finney asked him for the chapter and 
verse, and the man quoted the catechism, 
and that was all he knew of the Bible, and 
he thought that that was all Finney knew 
of the Bible ; but he was mistaken. Fin- 
ney then gave him what he believed the 
Bible taught about Adam's sin and his 
own — reasoned with him of these things 
— and the man was enlightened, satisfied, 
and converted. 

Of this incident he says, 'M felt it my 
duty to expose all the hiding-places of sin- 
ners and to hunt them out from under 
those peculiar views of orthodoxy in 
which I found them entrenched." 

He hunted them out from under the 
175 



Cbarles ©♦ JFinneis 



delusion that man ought to be willing to 
be damned for the glory of God. He 
knocked that nonsense out of them. 
Happy is the preacher who has the art of 
knocking the nonsense out of people with- 
out knocking their heads off. 

Nothing demonstrates so clearly the 
reality of conversion as a change of dis- 
position. The vicious be- 

^^"verMons^"* ^^^^ virtuous, the penurious 
generous, the selfish self- 
sacrificing. He compelled sinners to con- 
fess not the sins of Adam, but their own, 
according to the Scriptures. Under his 
preaching criminals confessed, not simply 
their abstract or theoretical sinfulness, 
but their actual crimes. Both in England 
and this country, numerous and large 
amounts of money were refunded by per- 
sons who had stolen them, or obtained 
them through meanness or deception. 
Business men of good repute came for- 
ward and acknowledged their sins of over- 
reaching their customers, or underpaying 
their clerks, or undermining their com- 
petitors. 

176 



afinancial Convereions 



While he was expounding the Golden 
Rule, a man arose and asked if a certain 
case came under his interpretation of the 
rule. Mr. Finney said it would. The 
man went away and made restitution of 
thirty thousand dollars. 

At one of his revival meetings a man 
was observed forcing a companion into 
the house and to the front seat. The co- 
erced hearer was found to be utterly in- 
different, and the man who compelled him 
to come was asked for an explanation. 
He said he observed that Mr. Finney's 
preaching made men conscientious and 
induced them to pay their debts. Several 
of Finney's converts had paid him debts 
that were outlawed. ''This fellow owes 
me several hundred dollars, and I thought 
if he could only be converted under Mr. 
Finney I could get my pay." 

He insisted upon religion and not alone 
upon the subject of religion, and was 
himself driven by a religious motive and 
not simply by a partiality for the sub- 
ject of religion. Crooked saints were 
straightened out, and the croakers ceased 

M 177 



Cbarlea ©♦ JFlnneis 



to croak and began to find something 
in the sermon to enjoy besides its de- 
fects. An old lady used to bore the wom- 
en's meetings with her long and tedious 
whine. She had the impression that it 
was her duty to speak at every meeting ; 
and sometimes she would get up and 
complain of the Lord, that he made it her 
duty to speak, while the fine ladies who 
could speak so much to edification, were 
allowed to attend and ''have no cross,'' 
as she expressed it, ''to take up." A 
new spirit came upon her ; a great change 
came over her. She ceased to complain 
and spoke to edification. Everybody was 
interested and she became a great favor- 
ite. 

His interest in lawyers, and their in- 
terest in his preaching, illustrate his par- 
tiality for appealing to the 

«!'i ^^Lllt reason and the understand- 
ing, rather than the emo- 
tions. He says, "I was particularly in- 
terested in lawyers. I knew they were 
more controlled by argument, evidence, 
and logical statements than any other 
178 



mot a 0o6pel Auctioneer 



class.'' Many lawyers and judges were 
among his converts. 

Physicians he found more difficult. '* I 
think their studies incline them to skep- 
ticism and a certain form of mate- 
rialism.'' 

Lawyer : A theory comes first and is 
indispensable. Physician : A theory 
comes last, or never, since it is never in- 
dispensable. So a lawyer's Christianity 
might be more insincere and fallacious 
than a physician's agnosticism. 

He was a preacher of the gospel after 
the manner of the revivalists without de- 
generating into an auction- 
eer of the gospel. He did '"^tttonT 
not fall into the professional, 
'* Going — going — gone ! " style of deal- 
ing out the good news of eternal life. 
He did not make converts in order to 
count them, he made converts that could 
be counted upon. There are no spiritual 
statistics in his book ; no figuring up of 
converts that the Lord had enabled him 
to count. 

He did not undertake to convert souls 
179 



Cbarlea ©♦ jfinne^ 



by simply raising the temperature of the 
body, turning them into a small room 
and turning on the gas, and the heat, and 
the rhetoric, and the morbid tears of a 
heavy supper and Japanese tea. He used 
no incubator. 

The longer he lived the narrower he 
became with respect to the human ani- 
mal's need of amusement, 
^^o^n x'^flfc^^' He even by a droll twist of 
thought called religion an 
amusement. The highest amusement is 
found in doing the will of God. How 
easy to prove then that the self-denial 
which he insists upon as indispensable to 
Christianity becomes self-indulgence. 

Great logicians fail in logic, as all the 
strong characters fail in what they are 
great in. 

With all his gift of logic he would re- 
sort to this trick of the rhetorician. This 
god on the intellectual Olympus would 
come down among the cheap preachers 
who quarrel with the new and true ver- 
sion because it substitutes the awful fact 
of condemnation for the more rhetorical 
i8o 



1Hi6 IRevivals 



of damnation. *' Shalt be condemned ! " 
that is logic which carries the reason. 
** Shalt be damned!" that is crying 
''Boo," which startles the nerves, weak 
nerves. 

You will find in his autobiography no 
elaborate or detailed history of his re- 
vivals in Rochester, Phila- 
delphia, Boston, or England, 
but they are touched upon with a sen- 
tentious force and comprehensive skill 
that cannot but fascinate as well as tan- 
talize. 

His connection with the college at 
Oberlin does not occupy much of his 
memoir, and must be omitted from this 
address ; but it should be elaborated in a 
full history of Finney's work. Whether 
considered educationally, politically, theo- 
logically, or religiously, it is a period of 
marked importance. 

He was ordained a Presbyterian and 
became a Congregationalist, but he stood 
apart and worked apart from all denomi- 
nations, owing to the attitude of the 

churches toward slavery and toward the 
i8i 



Cbarlee (5. jftnneis 



education of the colored people. He was 
a Christian unattached. 

Among his obstacles were ill-con- 
structed audience rooms, obstacles which 
that arch-architect, the arch-adversary, 
delights to put into the way of the gos- 
pel. So he planned one to suit himself, 
the Broadway Tabernacle, New York. 

He says : '* The plan of the interior of 
that house was my own. I had observed 
the defects of churches in regard to sound, 
and was sure that I could give the plan of 
a church in which I could easily speak to 
a much larger congregation than any 
house would hold that I had ever seen. 
An architect was consulted, and I gave 
him my plan. But he objected to it, that 
it would not appear well, and feared that 
it would injure his reputation to build a 
church with such an interior as that. I 
told him that if he would not build it on 
that plan, he was not the man to superin- 
tend its construction at all. It was finally 
built in accordance with my ideas ; and 
it was a most commodious and comfort- 



able place to speak in.' 
182 



©ppoettion 



They gave him his '' vinegar to drink." 
He was opposed in such a manner and in 
such a variety of forms, and 

, , . , , J. (Opposition 

by such a variety and diver- 
sity of people, with so much virulence 
and vehemence, as to bring to mind, as no 
other page of modern ecclesiastical history 
does, the opposition which Christianity 
met with in the days of its Founder. 
Piety and impiety, orthodoxy and hetero- 
doxy, Calvinist and rationalist, Pilate and 
Herod, joined hands against him. 

He was opposed by Presbyterians, old 
school, new school, and no school, by 
Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, 
Universalists, Unitarians, Deists, Theists, 
and Atheists, by Princeton, and Ando- 
ver, and Harvard, and Yale, by all the 
''schools'' and all the fools, by D. D.'s 
and LL. D.'s. They found fault with his 
doctrine, his rhetoric, with everything he 
did and the method by which he did it. 

The Rev. Mr. Patterson, a Presbyterian 

minister of Philadelphia, said to him when 

he came there : '' If the Presbyterian 

ministers find out your views, they will 

183 



Cbarles ©♦ JFinne^ 



hunt you out of the city as they would a 
wolf/' 

Finney replied very much after the 
manner of one of Luther's replies: *' I 
can preach no other doctrine. I do not 
believe that they can get me out of Phila- 
delphia." 

Some held their garments away from 
him. He invited an old lady to ride with 
him as she seemed unable to walk. When 
she was seated she asked who he was, 
and where he lived, and upon being told, 
replied: *'Oberlin! Why, our minister 
said he would just as soon send a son to 
State prison as to Oberlin." 

An eminent Doctor of Divinity says 
that he said to Mr. Finney : '* Finney, 
I know your plan and you know I do ; 
you mean to come to Connecticut, and 
carry a streak of fire to Boston. But if 
you attempt it, as the Lord liveth, Til 
meet you at the State line, and call out 
all the artillerymen, and fight every inch 
of the way to Boston, and then Til fight 
you there." 

He was pursued and persecuted for 
184 



©ppoaitton 



preaching what Mr. Moody now preaches 
on a platform covered with the clergy 
of all denominations, what the Methodist 
preachers have always preached, and 
what is heard now from nine hundred and 
ninety-nine out of every thousand Con- 
gregationalist and Baptist pulpits, and 
from almost as large a proportion of Pres- 
byterian pulpits. 

He was tried by newspaper, by Presby- 
tery, by committee ; and a great conven- 
tion sat upon him — without crushing him. 
The abjects gathered themselves to- 
gether against him. He was denounced 
as a lunatic, a fanatic, a madman, an 
amalgamationist, a heretic, an Arminian, 
and an abolitionist. 

He was accused of conspiring to unite 
Church and State. He was assailed by 
the daily paper, by the weekly paper, and 
by the quarterly review. He was ar- 
raigned in book form and pamphlet form, 
and in a form of godliness without the 
power thereof, in private letters and pub- 
lic letters signed by distinguished and ex- 
tinguished names and no names at all. 
185 



Cbatlea ©♦ jfinnc^ 



He was dogged in this country and 
went to England only to find that leading 
men had written and spoken against his 
views without having read a line of them, 
except as they came from his enemies. 
He was followed and preceded by spies. 
His meetings were caricatured and his 
preaching travestied. His methods were 
misrepresented and his motives maligned. 
False witnesses did rise up and laid to his 
charge things that he knew not. '* They 
rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling 
of my soul.'' 

In short he was pursued by all manner 
of vilification, calumny, and slander, ex- 
cept that of a moral nature. Not a breath 
was ever breathed so far as I can learn, 
against his moral character, social or 
financial. There was no financial scan- 
dal connected with his meetings; he did 
not beg for money, or for letters from con- 
verts. He was poor in everything except 
good works and — a good wife. 

He was rich only in faith — but so rich 
in that, that he was fed by rich saints, 
which is more than can be said of Elijah, 
i86 



B6 a moral jforce 



and quenched his thirst by smiting the 
rock of penurious religion, which is more 
than can be said of Moses, and much more 
than can be said of thousands of preachers 
who have to turn away in despair from 
their hard-hearted, well-to-do parishioners, 
and get their food from the ravens and 
their water from the rock, or not at all ; 
and all the people say, Amen. 

Considered exclusively as a moral 
force, manifested in changing the charac- 
ters upon which he brought 
himself to bear, he is one ^'^.^^'^^ 
of the most unique and 
commanding men of modern times. 

As a study in character he will reward 
the student of human nature abundantly, 
in any one of the marked and striking 
phases which he represents. He will 
yield wonderful results whether as a re- 
ligious force or as a moral force or as an 
intellectual force ; whether as a leader of 
thought, or as a theologian, or as a relig- 
ious reformer. 

He reminds one of the Apostle Paul in 

emotional intensity, in hard-headedness, 
187 



Cbarles ©♦ jfinnei^ 



in vigor of understanding, in logical acu- 
men, in unremitting zeal, in pressing for 
immediate results, in forcing a verdict on 
the spot, in will and in assaulting the 
will, in passionate tenacity of purpose, 
and in exclusive self-denying devotion to 
Jesus Christ. 

One half a century he spent in the serv- 
ice of God and of man, of heaven and of 
earth, of religion and of morals, of the 
Christian religion and the public welfare. 

I should say that he was a fanatic in 

the sense that Luther was, and Knox, and 

Calvin, and Arminius, and 

''^ana«c?^ Savonarola. He ran out at 
some points in an excessive 
manner. He was narrow at the top in 
comparison with his base. He was a fa- 
natic in the sense that all agitators are 
fanatical, whether political or religious, 
whether anti-slavery, or anti-intemper- 
ance, anti-religious-torpor, or anti-any- 
thing else. It is impossible for such forces 
to get on, or do much without doing too 
much, to do anything without overdoing it. 

But what man of this great century can 
i88 



BnD We 2)icD BIso 



show a grander or sublimer record ? Who 
can measure his influence for righteous- 
ness, its breadth, its depth, its duration ? 

The many contrivances, or devices, or 
machinery shown at the Centennial Exhi- 
bition were interesting and wonderful, but 
there was no such power of engineering 
or forces on exhibition as this man was. 
Their use will end and their influence per- 
ish ; his influence will endure through all 
time and all eternity. The men of the 
century are imperishable. 

That one event which happeneth unto 

all happened unto him. His last day on 

earth was a quiet Sunday, 

August i6, 1875. He was ^^^^Jf^'^ 

within two weeks of his 

eighty-third birthday. He walked out 

with his wife at sunset and listened to the 

music in the church near by. He returned 

and joined with his family in singing 

*' Jesus Lover of my Soul.'' During the 

night he was seized with pains at the 

heart and began to sink. Abouttwo o'clock 

in the morning he asked for some water. 

But it could not quench his thirst, and he 
189 



Cbatles ©♦ jfinne^ 



said, '* Perhaps this is the thirst of 
death.'' A moment afterward he added, 
*' I am dying/' and he died. 

The lesson he would have us learn from 
his dying words is the same that he would 
have us learn from him as a living epistle 
for fifty years : If any man have the 
thirst of death, he can have the '* Water 
of Life," if he will. 

Jesus, lover of my soul 

Let me to thy bosom fly, 
While the raging billows roll, 

While the tempest still is high. 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide. 

Till the storm of life is past, 
Safe into the haven guide 

O receive my soul at last. 



190 



HUGH LATIMER 



HUGH LATIMER was born at Thur- 
caston, Leicestershire, England, in 
1490, seven years after Luther. 

His father was a well-to-do farmer, or 
renter, and rented enough land to keep 
half a dozen men employed. 
He kept one hundred sheep ^^'^^ ^^J^^^'^"*" 
and Mrs. Latimer milked 
thirty cows and brought up seven chil- 
dren in godliness and the fear of the Lord. 
His father made enough to give Hugh a 
university education, and to give his sisters 
five pounds and twenty nobles apiece as 
their marriage portion. His father was a 
soldier as well as a farmer, a sort of citi- 
zen soldier, always ready to get down his 
bow and arrows in defense of king and 
country. 

In the first picture we have of the boy 
Hugh, he is helping his father to buckle 
on his armor, for he is going to help Henry 

N 193 



!Hu9b Xatimer 



VII. put down the Cornish rebels at 

Blackheath Field. We have no details 

of his early history, or for 

history. He had a godly 
bringing up, and was trained in the hon- 
esty and integrity which he afterward 
preached. 

At fourteen years of age he entered the 
University of Cambridge, the same year 
that Luther entered the University of Er- 
furt. The sixteenth century brought in 
with it some men that make it memorable 
and illustrious : Luther, Knox, Calvin, 
Ridley, Cranmer, Latimer, and Tyndale. 
He received his degree of Master of Arts 
at twenty-four years of age. 

He studied divinity and began to preach. 
His preaching roused Cambridge. It was 
rousing preaching, caustic, witty, daring, 
for he was a born preacher. He preached 
against wickedness, but he was a Roman 
Catholic, zealous and bitter against the 
Reformers. He says he was as obstinate 
a Papist as there was in England. His 
oration at his taking of his Bachelor of 



JUie Earls IHtston^ 



Divinity degree was an answer to Melanc- 
thon, Luther's right-hand man. 

One writer says of him : *' He held 
the Reformers in such horror that he 
thought they were the supporters of Anti- 
Christ, whose appearance was to precede 
the coming of the Son of Man, and con- 
jectured that the day of judgment was at 
hand.'' To his mind every commotion 
was the coming of the day of judgment. 
He used his wit and ridicule upon a fellow- 
student, Stafford, who had adopted the 
reform opinions, but a fellow-preacher, 
Thomas Bilney, used his powers of per- 
suasion on him and his eyes were opened 
by Bilney. Great epochs in the lives of 
individuals and of nations are brought 
about by the influence of one man over 
another. One man converts another. 
The words of the wise are as nails. 
Death and life are in the power of the 
tongue. Latimer says, ** He called me to 
knowledge." 

He joined the Reformers and his preach- 
ing was a trumpet call to a life consistent 
with the profession of the Christian re- 
195 



IHuQb Xatimcr 



ligion. It was a direct, open, personal as- 
sault upon the vices of individuals in his 
congregation. He withstood 
"fce^oinstbe ^ ^j^ ^ ^^ ecclesiastics, 

priests, and preachers, who 
were to be blamed for neglecting their 
duties. He was terribly vehement in his 
rebukes of the idle and vicious in high 
places. He denounced preachers and 
bishops for ''stuffing themselves like the 
hogs of Epicure's flock, taking no thought 
though their poor parishioners miserably 
pine away and die of hunger.'' 

Protestantism has always been and con- 
tinues to be a struggle out from under the 
incubus of superstition and priestcraft. 

The effect of his preaching was instan- 
taneous and profound. One of his hear- 
ers says his sermons left pricks and stings 
in the hearts of his hearers which moved 
them to conform their lives to his preach- 
ing. Some went to hear him preach, 
''swelling, blown-full, and puffed up like 
Esop's frog " with envy and malice 
against him, but when they were asked 

how they liked the preaching they an- 
196 



IHe Joins tbe IRetormera 



swered, ** Never man spake like this 
man/' 

*'None but the stiff-necked and uncir- 
cumcised in heart went away from his 
sermons without being affected with high 
detestation of sin, and moved to all godli- 
ness and virtue." 

One of the stiff-necked who went away 
from his preaching with a high detestation 
of Latimer instead of his own sin, was 
the bishop of Ely. 

While Latimer was preaching the bishop 
came into the church with a lot of priests 
at his heels. Latimer paused until his 
lordship was seated. 

Perhaps the bishop and perhaps the 
audience thought it was a mark of defer- 
ence on the part of the preacher. If so, 
they were mistaken. The preacher had 
no deference for men of high station if 
they were men of low morals. Especially 
did he detest the sin of high ecclesiastics, 
who attempted to cover their rascalities 
with the regimentals of the church. 

So when the Bishop of Ely had taken 
his seat, Latimer dropped the subject he 
197 



IHugb Xatimer 



had in hand, and took another — took the 
bishop for a subject. He proceeded to 
take the likeness of a model bishop, one 
that feared God and loved righteousness. 
His lordship of Ely knew so well that it 
was not his likeness that he was offended 
at it. He knew that was what a bishop 
ought to be and that he was not what he 
ought to be. His lordship ran to his car- 
dinal after his thrashing like a whipped 
schoolboy to his mamma. The cardinal 
listened to the bishop's complaint that 
Preacher Latimer had hit him with a ser- 
mon, and sent for the preacher and asked 
him what he had said that gave his lord- 
ship of Ely so much offense. 

The cardinal, so far from being dis- 
pleased was delighted, and said to Lati- 
mer : *' If the Bishop of Ely cannot abide 
such doctrine as you have here repeated 
you shall preach it to his beard, let him 
say what he will.'' The bishop forbade 
him to preach in his diocese, but the 
cardinal gave him a license to preach in 
any church in England. 

In this cardinal we have come upon the 
198 



'Mbo waa tbl0 CarOinan 



name of Wolsey, the renowned Cardinal 
Wolsey. You see what an 
era of history we are in, of ^e^^^.S^^' 
history and historical char- 
acters, both royal and ecclesiastical. One 
of the most conspicuous characters of 
history and of Shakespeare is Wolsey, 
Henry VIII. 's crafty, ambitious, unscrupu- 
lous, and powerful minister, whose high- 
blown pride finally broke under him, and 
who died of a broken heart saying, "If 
I had served my God as diligently as I 
have served my king, he would not have 
forsaken me in mine age.'' Wolsey too 
seemed to have a liking for the plucky 
preacher. Something in him won the 
cardinal, who was ambitious to be pope. It 
was this preaching of righteousness to 
the beards of the unrighteous that made 
Latimer obnoxious to the world, the flesh, 
and the church. 

We have no account of his domestic 
life — he had none ; but he was abundant 
in domestic virtues and kindly graces. 
He was kind to the poor, sympathetic to- 
ward the unfortunate, full of alms-deeds. 
199 



IHugb Xattmcr 



His parish life was his home life and 
his parishoners were his children. He 
practised what he preached, goodness, 
brotherly love, honesty, and went about 
doing good. 

The Bible was published into Latin, 
and the ecclesiastical authorities kept tight 
hold of what few copies there were. 
Latimer advocated its publication in Eng- 
lish, the language of the people. A friar 
answered him by saying that if the peo- 
ple were allowed to read the Bible, '' the 
farmer would stop plowing lest he should 
peradventure disobey the Scripture, by 
looking back after he had put his hand to 
the plow, and the baker would be afraid 
to leaven his bread lest a little leaven 
should leaven the whole lump." 

Humor was one of the elements of his 
power as a preacher ; it feathered the 
arrow. He had an alert sense of the 
ludicrous and it gave him elasticity. In- 
stead of breaking he would bend under 
the storm that beat upon him. 

Henry VIII., of unsavory memory, was 
king of England. What recollections at 
200 



IHenr^ IDHHIl^ was IRln^ of En^lanD 

the mention of his name ! The king 
who married his third wife the next day 
after beheading his second, 
and took off the head of his ^f^J^llT 
fifth wife in the height of 
their honeymoon ! He liked Latimer ; 
the corrupt monarch befriended the godly 
preacher. In 1530 he made him his chap- 
lain. It was a strange alliance and was 
to have a strange effect upon the cause 
of the Reformation. Drawn together in 
person they parted company at once and 
forever with respect to the Reformed 
Faith. 

While Latimer was answering Melanc- 
thon, Henry was answering Luther. But 
Latimer broke off there and pronounced 
unequivocally for the Protestant move- 
ment. Henry continued to stand between 
the pope and his opponents, and to play 
fast and loose with the Protestants and 
the pope to the end. So far as he became 
their friend he was impelled by the worst 
of motives. 

The king's meanness promoted Prot- 
estantism. On December i, 1530, he re- 
201 



1Hu0b Xatimer 



ceived a benediction from the pope as a 
reward for his opposition to Luther. The 
pope called him *' Defender of the Faith." 

Will the chaplaincy silence Latimer ? 
Was it given for that purpose ? ** Ye seek 
me, not because ye saw the miracle, but 
because ye did eat of the loaves and were 
filled." 

No, Latimer was not the man to sell his 
birthright of free speech for an office. 
He wrote his master a letter. It had a 
ring of fine mettle in it. He told the king 
to be a faithful minister of God's gifts, 
and not a defender of his faith. *'For 
God will not have his cause defended by 
man or man's power. . . Wherefore re- 
member that the day is at hand when you 
shall give account of the blood that hath 
been spilt by your sword." This was 
bold talk. 

Latimer used his position for shielding 
the Protestants from the devouring rage 
of their enemies, but he did not accom- 
plish much. Henry forbade the circulation 
or reading of Tyndale's English Bible, 
and Latimer wrote the king a letter of 



(Iomml00ione5 ftlarcb 9, 1530 

remonstrances, to which Henry paid no 
attention. 

Never was a game of chess played with 
living men more complex or perplexing. 
On one side of the board was a bad pope, 
and on the other side of the board was a 
worse king. Their moves, from the worst 
of motives, affected the best of causes. 
Reformation was promoted or retarded by 
the wicked whims of powerful men thrown 
into power by the accident of birth. 
Righteousness and liberty were in the 
keeping of crowned villainy. 

Latimer became participant in an in- 
fluential event. In 1530 he became one 
of the commission that sat 
upon the divorce of Henry commfssfonct) 
VIII. from Catharine of Ar- 1^530^* 
agon. He approved that 
scandalous act, and preached before the 
king on the following Sunday, and the 
king, we are told, greatly praised the 
sermon. 

Henry was excommunicated by the 

pope for his divorce from Catharine and 

became head of the Church of England. 
203 



Mugb Xatimer 



Wolsey's intrigue with the pope in favor 
of Catharine lost him his place, and the 
Reformers lost a friend at court. 

Then Sir Thomas More, another remark- 
able historical character, became Henry's 
chief minister, one of the most attractive 
and detestable, amiable and cruel, pious 
and bloodthirsty, saints that ever adorned 
the private life or disgraced the religious 
life of his times. He was one of those 
men of whom it may be said that but for 
their religion they would be the most 
estimable of men. 

He killed Bainham for being a Protest- 
ant and the Protestants killed him for 
being a Catholic. But for the king he 
would probably have burned Latimer. 
Two years and a half, and his hour on 
the stage came to a bloody end. 

The king appointed Latimer to a living 
at West Kingston, in Wiltshire, in 1531, and 
he retired from the court to the compara- 
tive seclusion of a rural parish, but there 
is no such thing as quiet or seclusion or 
silence for the bold and zealous Reformer. 

He preached at every opportunity and 
204 



CommteeioneD flQarcb 9, 1530 

sought out opportunities to preach. He 
was *'as sheep in the midst of wolves." 
The wolves were the bishops who thirsted 
for his blood because they winced under 
his preaching. They were reinforced by 
the country clergy, and Latimer was 
again in the hands of his enemies. 

Among other counts in the indictment 
against him was that of preaching that 
there was no purgatory and no material 
fire in hell. He maintained that the fire 
could only be a figure, since you could not 
touch the soul with material fire. 

This was especially displeasing to the 
persecutors, who would probably never 
have thought of fire as a punishment for 
heresy if they had not interpreted the 
Bible to mean that the Almighty had se- 
lected that kind of punishment for here- 
tics. Those who chained the body of 
the heretic to the tree, and set fire to it, 
believed that the Deity was standing 
ready to cast his soul into equally literal 
flames and chains. 

In 1532 he was summoned by the arch- 
bishop and bishops to answer to the charge 
205 



IHuQb Xatimer 



of heresy, but Latimer was as wary be- 
fore his accusers as he was bold in the 
pulpit. He answered discreetly. He ob- 
served that a curtain covered the fire- 
place, and that he was examined near this 
curtain. One of his examiners exclaimed : 
'* I pray you, speak out, Master Latimer ; 
I am very thick of hearing, and there be 
many that sit far off." This confirmed 
Latimer's suspicions, and he heard a pen 
taking down his answers behind the cur- 
tain. 

He was required to subscribe to certain 
articles on pain of excommunication and 
death, and he did subscribe, 
whether to the full extent 
required is not known. The narrative 
here, as in several other parts, is obscure. 
That he made some kind of submission 
there is no doubt. He kneeled before 
the convocation and confessed that he 
had ** misordered himself so far, in that 
he had so presumptuously and boldly 
preached, reproving certain things by 
which the people that were infirm hath 

taken occasion of ill." 
206 



He TlHleaftena 



In recalling the weakening of such men 
under such circumstances, remember their 
education, their times, the natural recoil 
from a death so horrible. Furthermore, 
Latimer was a feeble man physically ; he 
was never free from bodily infirmities. 

And that is not all. I cannot but infer 
from the tone and style of Latimer's 
preaching that he was something of what 
is now known as a Broad Churchman. It 
was difficult for him to put much more 
emphasis upon opposition to the dogmas 
than he did upon the dogmas themselves. 
He saw the fallacy and absurdity of tran- 
substantiation, and baptismal regeneration, 
and the like, but he did not feel the ne- 
cessity of sacrificing everything in doing 
away with them. He said : '^ Cannot we 
preach the gospel, and save men in spite 
of them ? Shall we pull down the whole 
fabric to get rid of a few rotten timbers ? 
At any rate there is no hurry. It is too 
soon to bring on a crisis.'' 

An indication of this spirit is seen in 
the opinion he expressed with respect to 
a religious manual which he had, when a 
207 



MuQb Xatimer 



bishop, united with the other bishops in 
publishing: 'Mt is a troublous thing to 
agree upon a doctrine in things of such 
controversy, every man, I trust, meaning 
well, and yet not all meaning one way." 
He hopes the king will tolerate the manual 
for a time, however uncertain it may 
sound. ^*He can separate for himself. 
So giving place for a season to the frailty 
and gross capacity of his subjects.'' 
What he advised the king to do he did 
himself. He bore with the ** gross ca- 
pacity'' of his associates and opponents. 

Being further molested he appealed to 
the king, and the king delivered him out 
of the hands of the Philistines. He re- 
turned to his parish and his preaching. 

The tide turned again in favor of the 
Reformers. The archbishop of Canter- 
bury and primate, Warham, died and 
Cranmer succeeded him and made Lati- 
mer a bishop. 

Thus Cranmer became archbishop of 

Canterbury and primate of the English 

Church in 1533. Here is another historic 

character, another name of lustre and re- 

208 



Cranmer 



nown in the history of the Reformation, 
another martyr, one of the three martyrs 
whose martyrdom gave the 
Protestants their greatest 
impulse, Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. 

Cranmer acquiesced in the burning of 
Frith for denying that the bread of the 
supper is Christ's body. You will find 
the very words for which Frith was 
burned at the close of the Communion 
service in the Church of England Book 
of Common Prayer : '' The natural body 
and blood of our Saviour Christ are in 
heaven and not here, it being against the 
truth of Christ's natural body to be at 
one time in more places than one." 

Cranmer tried to persuade Frith out of 
this heresy, and was himself persuaded 
of its truth by Frith's writings and was 
burned for adopting them. Like Forest 
and Bilney he recanted, but afterward re- 
canted his recantation. He held his right 
hand in the fire at the stake, until it was 
consumed, as a punishment for writing 
the recantation. 

This reminds us of the success of per- 
o 209 



IHugb Xatimer 



secution. If men of so much nerve and 
faith, and so much responsibility for their 
cause, almost abandon it in this awful 
moment, what must be the recoil and 
horror of men of weaker spirit ? If the 
leaders shrink, what must be the shrink- 
ing of the masses ? If martyrdom is an 
example to inspirit the occasional spirit of 
high degree, it is a disastrous discourage- 
ment to the common run of ordinary 
minds. 

Here again we have the blood and 
mettle and stuff and stamina that holds 
on and never lets go, and 
wms m the end, whether it 
be the reformation of a church, or the 
pushing of an idea, or the colonization of 
a continent. It is the Teutonic, Viking, 
Northern, Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, pertinacity 
which will die game if it must die. 

It carried Latimer to a high place. 
Through Cranmer's influence he was re- 
appointed royal chaplain 
and was made Bishop of 
Worcester. Instead of the stake he had 
a seat on the episcopal bench. He 

2IO 



^be tri^e ZmrxB 



preached as boldly in the bishop's lawn 
as in the priest's gown. 

His sermon at his consecration was 
another shell in the camp of his enemies. 
They denounced it as seditious and com- 
plained of it to the king, who summoned 
him to answer for it. He said : *' If your 
grace will allow me for a preacher, give 
me leave to discharge my own conscience 
and to frame my doctrine according to my 
audience. . . I would be a dolt to preach 
at the borders of your realm as I preach 
before your grace." 

This was one of the daring preacher's 
adroit answers. Henry was satisfied. 
His liking for Latimer saved him, and the 
wolves must leave their prey again. The 
stake was cheated of its victim once more. 
The time had not yet come. 

In one of his sermons before the royal 
family and nobles he declaims against 
covetousness, and this is a 
specimen of his preaching : ^"geTbS^^^ 

** Take heed and beware 
of covetousness. Take heed and beware 
of covetousness. Great complaints there 

211 



IHuQb Xatimer 



are of it and much crying out and preach- 
ing, but little amendment. Covetousness 
is the root of all evil. Then have at the 
root. Out with your swords, ye preachers, 
and have at the root. Stand not ticking 
and toying at the branches, for new 
branches will spring out again. . . Strike 
at the root and fear not these men of 
power, these oppressors of the needy. 
Fear them not but strike at the root.'' 

He denounced the whole hierarchy of 
ecclesiastics, bishops, abbots, priests — as 
strong thieves and jolly fellows with 
golden chains and velvet gowns. 

He was appointed to preach the open- 
ing sermon before the Convocation in 
1536. It was the highest 
assembly known to the 
church outside of Rome, and this was the 
highest place he was to fill until he should 
stand at the stake. St. Paul's Cathedral 
was crowded with ecclesiastics. The 
powerful Lord Cromwell, vicar general, 
presided. 

Cranmer, who was to follow Latimer 
to the stake, sat in the primate's chair, 
212 



Honors G^bicfien 



and others of the coming martyrs were 
present, and those who were to burn 
them. The great majority of that vast 
assembly thirsted for Latimer's blood 
while they listened to his sermon. 

It was the hour of their discomfiture 
and his triumph. Now was his head high 
and lifted up above his enemies round 
about him, abbots, bishops, priests ; they 
hated him with what Wesley calls '* pious 
venom.'' He rose in the pulpit and ex- 
claimed : ** What fruit has come of your 
long and great assembly ? What one 
thing that the people have been the better 
of a hair ? These are our holy men that 
say they are dead to the world, and none 
are more lively to the world. God com- 
mands you to feed his sheep, and you 
feed yourselves from day to day wallow- 
ing in delight and idleness. 

''Ye have not deceived God, but your- 
selves ; his gifts and benefits shall be to 
your greater damnation. Because ye 
have despised the clemency of the Master 
ye have deserved the severity of the 
Judge. 

213 



IHuQb Xatimet 



*' Let us see an account of your steward- 
ship. God will visit you. He will come. 
He will not tarry long. In the day in 
which we do not look for him, he will 
come and cut you in pieces and give you 
your portion with the hypocrites, where 
there shall be wailing and gnashing of 
teeth.'' 

At this convocation fourteen articles of 
faith were agreed upon, which made the 
first creed of the English Church. They 
were a compromise ; some of them were 
designed to conciliate the Reformers, and 
some of them to conciliate their perse- 
cutors. They pleased neither party, and 
displeased both parties. Transubstantia- 
tion was retained to gratify Henry, who 
never abandoned it — he was saved if that 
could save him. 

On the whole there was progress for 

the Protestants. Although the pope's 

authority was not entirely done away, it 

was hopelessly broken, and Tyndale's 

translation of the Bible was chained in 

every church, and any one might step in 

and read it. 

214 



X538 

In 1538 came a cloud over the Reform- 
er's good name and fame ; we are as- 
tounded to find our great 
martyr jommg m the mar- 
tyrdom of another. Cranmer, who was 
himself to burn, concurred in the burning 
of Friar Forrest for refusing to acknowl- 
edge the supremacy of Henry over the 
pope. Cromwell appointed Latimer to 
preach upon the occasion. 

We are astounded. We start back. Is 
this history ? Yes, this is history, this is 
the history of the church of Jesus Christ, 
this is the history of the religion of peace 
to men. 

Forrest's murder was more cruel and 
atrocious than that of any of them. He 
was put into an iron cage and the cage 
was surrounded by the fagots. The 
fagots were set on fire. While Forrest 
was slowly roasting alive in his iron cage, 
by command of the foremost Reformers 
and Protestants of that day, one of them, 
Hugh Latimer, preached. 

It is a miserable spectacle this. We 
account for it by the hardening influence 
21S 



SHugb Xattmer 



of a corrupt religion. None of the Re- 
formers, inclusive of our own immediate 
ancestors, the Puritans, ever outgrew the 
vindictive cruelty of their religious edu- 
cation. 

Henry and his tools passed what was 

known as ''the bloody act of six articles, 

and the whip with six 

Ubencamca gtings.'' By this act the 
•Reaction ^ -^ 

denial of transubstantiation 
was made punishable with death, and the 
denial of other articles incurred fine and 
imprisonment. Then came a reaction. 

The Reformers rebelled. Latimer re- 
signed his bishopric. He was tried for 
heresy and imprisoned in the Tower 
during the last years of Henry's reign, 
1546. 

Henry died and upon the accession of 

Edward VI. Latimer was set at liberty 

and his bishopric was offered 

"^"nT* ^' ^™' ^^^ h^ declined it. He 

was probably wearied out 

with court life. He could do little or 

nothing to correct its morals or utilize it 

for the benefit of the new opinions. He 
216 



BDwarD IDIF* is Iking 



has a curious way of disappearing from 
the history of his times. 

Latimer was an agitator, and was better 
at creating public opinion than utilizing it. 
He went everywhere preaching the word 
as he understood it, but now he would not 
preach long. Soon his voice was to be 
stifled in the flames. 

The young king reigned only six years, 
then died, and with him died the hopes of 
the Reformers. 

The curtain rose then upon one of the 
most pathetic tragedies of English history, 
the ten days' reign and the execution of 
Lady Jane Grey, although as innocent as 
any person now living. 

Edward was succeeded by Mary L 
The blood of two hundred and fifty men 
and fifty women is on her 
skirts. One hundred of them 3BIoo&s man> 
were starved and otherwise 
tortured. She did what she could to arrest 
the Reformation, and restore England to 
the authority of the pope. 

So the tide turned again, and Latimer 

was again a prisoner in the Tower, along 
217 



THuQb Xatimcr 



with Cranmer and Ridley. Here he 
endured hunger, cold, solitude, and every 
privation. In 1554 he was summoned to 
answer for his heresy at Oxford. The 
commissioners appointed to examine him 
with Cranmer and Ridley, simply came 
together to enjoy their triumph. They 
chuckled, for it was their turn now. The 
bishop who arraigned them from the pul- 
pit of St. Paul's, was now arraigned by 
them. The sheep were in the clutches of 
the wolves at last. 

No wisdom of serpents or harmlessness 
of doves could save them. Latimer's 
answers were received with jeers and 
laughter. He was feeble as well as old, 
and tortured with disease as well as bowed 
down with age. They taunted the old 
man. 

Latimer was so faint that he begged 

that they would do their worst quickly. 

'' What thou doest do quickly." He was 

thrown again into the common jail for a 

year, when he was again and for the 

last time brought before the inquisition of 

Bloody Mary. 

218 



JBlooDs ftlati^ 



He was feebler than before, for his im- 
prisonment had told upon him, but al- 
though his body tottered his mind was 
firm. 

The inquisitors twitted him with want 
of learning. He replied : '* You look for 
learning in one who has bare walls for his 
library, without book, pen, or ink.'' He 
congratulated them on their goodly victory 
over such a man. 

They could taunt him and defy him, 
but they could not break his spirit or 
destroy his faith. He was urged to re- 
cant, to declare for the pope and save his 
life. He refused with a spirited and noble 
scorn. He knew that if he should recant 
they would murder him all the same. It 
was the revenge of those who had been 
put in the wrong. They were condemned, 
Latimer and Ridley, and on the i6th of 
October, 1555, they were conducted to the 
stake. The monument to their memory 
is seen on the spot where they perished, 
at Oxford, England. 

Latimer was bowed under his burthen 

of years, trials, and privations ; the dis- 
219 



1Hu0b Xattmet 



orders that had always tortured him had 
been aggravated by age. The sun shone 
unobscured ; it was a pleasant autumn 
day. 

They came to the stake, and Ridley 
asked permission to say a word or two, 
whereupon the vice-chancellor ran and 
laid his hand over the martyr's mouth, 
and told him if he would recant he should 
have liberty not only to speak but to live. 
** All that a man hath will he give for his 
life," unless he has the sustaining power 
of the martyr's spirit. Ridley replied : 
**So long as the breath is in my body I 
will never deny my Christ, and his known 
truth. God's will be done in me. I com- 
mit our cause to Almighty God, who shall 
impartially judge all." 

Latimer added, *' There is nothing hid 
but shall be made manifest." 

Ridley distributed his gown, watch, and 
other keepsakes among his friends. 

Latimer wore a long shroud reaching 
over his feet under his threadbare coat. 
A New Testament hung to his girdle. 
His spectacles hung around his neck. He 



nOatti^rDom 



was stripped of these and his outer gar- 
ments were removed. They take off his 
socks and his feet were shod with only 
the preparation of the gospel of peace. 
The bowed, withered, grayhaired old man 
rose erect in his shroud. 

A murmur of sympathy mingled with 
horror, ran through the spectators. They 
were moved, and yet they 
were probably as familiar fmartierbom 
with the burning of a heretic 
as- we are with elections as the permanent 
amusement of a free people. 

An iron chain was fastened around 
Latimer and Ridley and fastened to the 
stake. A bag of gunpowder was tied to 
each of them by friends, an act of mercy. 
It was designed to hasten their end. So 
much escape of suffering was allowed them 
by the Holy Church of Bloody Mary. 

Ridley asked a friend to look after some 
cases of charity, especially that of his 
poor sister. He said nothing was on his 
conscience except that. His last thoughts, 
even in these awful straits, were of 
others, and not of himself. They brought 

221 



Wugb Xattmet 



the fagots and laid them about the feet of 
the Reformers, whereupon Latimer ex- 
claimed : *' Be of good comfort, Master 
Ridley, and play the man. We shall this 
day light such a candle, by God's grace, in 
England, as I trust shall never be put out.'' 

Everything was now ready. The 
fagots were set on fire. As the flames 
rose about them, Ridley cried: ''Lord, 
unto thy hands I commend my spirit. 
Lord, Lord, receive my spirit." 

Latimer held out his arms as if to em- 
brace the flames and welcomed his last 
enemy. He prayed : '* O Father in heaven, 
receive my soul." 

He stroked his face with his hand as 
though washing his face with the fire, and 
defying it to touch his soul. The gun- 
powder exploded and Latimer died. 

Ridley burned more slowly. The fire 
joined his enemies in taunting him. He 
cried, ''Let the fire come; I cannot 
burn." He tried to get more into the 
flame. Some one mercifully assisted the 
flame to reach him. The gunpowder ex- 
ploded at last and he likewise died. 



mart^rDom 



It was finished. They had played the 
man. They had kindled a light that 
should never be put out. 

If we play the man, we shall see by 
the light of the fire of this stake how un- 
Christlike and execrable is this persecuting 
intolerance. Have we played the man 
and the Christian to that extent ? 

For the want of this manliness the 
German Protestants refused coalition with 
the Protestants of England. Melancthon 
called the English martyrs the ** devil's 
martyrs." When the English Protestants 
fled to the continent, they were driven 
with abuse and insult from every port 
and town and hearthstone where the 
disciples of Luther prevailed. The en- 
mity between Calvinists and Lutherans 
was as fierce as that between Reformers 
and Catholics. The Lutherans avowed 
that, ** rather than tolerate such heretics 
as the Calvinists they would turn back to 
the Church of Rome." 

A strange, strange, strange history is 
the history of the breaking away of Eng- 
land from the dominion of Rome. It was 
223 



Mmb Xatimer 



not until Elizabeth came to the throne in 
1558 that the separation of the Church of 
England from the Church of Rome was 
consummated. 

Parliament established the Reformed 
religion in 1559, four years after Latimer 
and Ridley had been burned for preaching 
it, and Elizabeth became supreme governor 
in spiritual and ecclesiastical as well as 
temporal things. 

Then came the turn of the Protestants 
to persecute. They did not use the fire 
so freely, but they used fines, imprison- 
ment, and torture as freely as they dared. 
They had no more idea of tolerating the 
Catholics than the Catholics had of tol- 
erating them, and it was Protestant eat 
Protestant. The Reformed faith made it 
so hot for the Puritans in England that 
the Puritans fled to this country and made 
it hot for the Quakers. 

Religion entered into the cause of the 
last war between Turkey and Russia. 
The crescent on one flag means one re- 
ligion, the cross on the other flag means 
another religion — does it not ? Both Rus- 
224 



flOartist^om 



sian Christians and Turkish Moham- 
medans were as mercilessly intolerant as 
were the good Christians of the time of 
Saint Henry VIII., '* Defender of the 
Faith." 

Did I not hear Protestant preachers 
during that war express the wish and the 
prayer from the pulpit that the Turks 
might be crushed out and destroyed from 
the face of the earth ? Could any motive 
short of a religiously vindictive one prompt 
such a wish or inspire such a prayer ? 

Have you not known recent instances 
of members of a family being disowned 
and banished for becoming Catholics or 
Protestants ? Nay, do not some have the 
door shut against them and the heart 
steeled against them for going from one 
Protestant denomination to another ? 

What is this but the spirit of persecu- 
tion ? What is this but the intolerance 
that has covered the history of our re- 
ligion with reproach as with a garment 
and reddened every step of its progress 
with blood ? 

It certainly is. When we feel it moving 
p 225 



JUnQb Xatimet 



within us in the treatment of the parent, 
child, or friend, we may know we share 
in the religious malignity that burned 
Latimer at the stake. And we will never 
play the man nor act the Christian until 
the last symptom of this persecuting in- 
tolerance is eradicated from our hearts. 

*' By this shall all men know that ye 
are my disciples, if ye have love one to 
another.'' 



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